The Israel handball team tonight opened the 2024 European Championship qualification campaign with a 21:36 loss, in the most difficult match it could have asked for, against the Iceland team, one of the top quality handball powers in the world (sixth place in the last European Championship, and a team with a total of 39 participations in the European Championships, World and Olympic Games), Reykjavík. On Sunday, the team will host their first home game of the campaign when they meet the Czech team (who beat Estonia tonight 23:31) – in a very important game for the continuation.
The start of the game did not foreshadow the continuation, Tomer Bodenheimer made it 0:1, Daniel Mosindi with a spectacular goal equalized to 2:2. Yoav Lombroso received an assist from Mosindi and the score was 5:3, but Iceland ran away to a 3:8 lead, with 7 scorers in its review. Yoav Lombroso and Nathan Dayan scored, but the Icelanders continued to punish. Shanir Natsia (from another assist by Musindi) made it 13:7, but immediately after that he was sent off for the second time for two minutes.
Mosindi with another assist to Yuval Katz, and another goal by Nadav Cohen – and the minor team to minus 5 – 14:9 – two and a half minutes before the break. Adir Cohen and the Icelandic Alison scored, Tomer Bodenheimer squeezed a penalty and Nadav Cohen missed a second penalty in a half in which the Icelandic goalkeeper Gustafsson excelled. A half that was a miss for the team.
The team’s bad start to the second half, offensively and defensively, led to a 1:5 run by the Icelanders: Kristensen and Johansson brought the score to plus 8. Yonatan Dayan responded with a nice goal, but Kristensen and Gudjonsson scored 11:21 which led to a timeout by Dragan Jokic. The Icelanders ran to plus 14 goals and from there the team was not able to come back.
Scorers for Israel: Yoav Lombroso 5, Yonatan Dayan and Adir Cohen 3 KA, Tomer Bodenheimer, Amit Stellman and Alon Oberman 2 KA, Daniel Musindi, Shanir Natsia, Yuval Katz and Nadav Cohen 1 KA. Kristiansen was the best in Iceland with 7 goals From 8 attempts.
Dragan Jokic said at the end: “I’ve had better days. In the second half we were down unfortunately, after in the first half we played quite well. We missed, but we were in the game. The opening in the second half with their 1:5, and the mistakes we made later when they punished each of them closed the game.”
He said about the level differences: “For me, of course there are differences between the national teams, but in my opinion not as big as the difference. What is important is that we tried to show what we can, and now we know better what we need for the next game. We are going back to Tel Aviv, we will prepare, we will consider making changes and of course we hope to get a good result against the Czech Republic.”