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Norway unconvincing, Belarus dangerous

Norway have lost only one game so far, just like Spain and Sweden who are in the semifinals, but Norway have to fight for the 9th spot

The exclusive previews are written by our reporters directly from Austria the venue for this EC! 

Even though they've lost one game - their opener France (29-22) - Norway were an unpleasant surprise here. It's not so much the fact that they're in the playoffs for spots 9 to 12, but what they've shown on the court. Their game is very predictable, they have very few good actions and if their main action doesn't work or they don't get the ball to the pivot, they usually end up in 'no man's land'. We saw that two days ago against Estonia as the game ended 27-21, but this +6 was not a realistic state of thing, especially considering how hard the Estonians fought. In the 45th minute, the score was 17-16 and they won only due to loss of power and poor conversion rate, i.e. the Norwegian keeper Aasheim, who was their best player once again.

Coach Vidar Gjesdal underestimated his opponents a bit in the first half as he used his second-string back-line for mot of the time. They had 11-6 but then failed to score in the last 9 minutes of the first half. Estonia got to 11-10 and Gjesdal saw things were heading south and he used his main three back-players G. Johannessen - Eriksen - S. Johannesen for most of the second half. All in all, it was a modest performance from them but it still got them the top spot in the group due to Switzerland's defeat against Macedonia (30-34) and they will face the Belarus and not the Hungarians, who have topped the other group.

Sandvik's ankle injury has ruled him out of this game and he's probably out of this competition.

- It wasn't as easy as we expected, Estonia are not a handball superpower but they have a good team. When we created 11-6, we lost focus. The second half was alright - said middle-back Inge Eriksen who played for 48 minutes and had only 2/4 field goal. Their wing Pedersen was their main man once again with 7/11, but since he's their penalty-taker, that's not so strange.

Gøran Johannessen played for only 20 minutes in the second half and still ended with 5/6. He's a very important player but his back problems prevent him from playing as much as Norway would want to.

- It was not a good performance. We were unsure in everything we did, we had no flow of the ball. We tried everything but it didn't work. Luckily for us, we won the game - said Gjesdal.

They can definitely be happy with their defense as they haven't conceded over 23 goals since their defeat against France at the start, although this stat should be taken with a pinch of salt as their last three games were played against Estonia, Switzerland and Macedonia, teams with very modest attacks.

Belarus are a better team than those three, and the Norwegians lost against the Belarus two years ago in Austria by 37-33 even though they had Sagosen in their rotation and he scored 7 goals. The Belarus duo Hadkevič - Harbuz got a combined total of 23 goals against them.

A huge plus for Norway could lie in the fact that their coach practically doesn't use Harbuz except to take the penalties, which he had no problem win against Hungary. Šinkel is ahead of him in rotation, but it's hard to say why. He's a left-back who got 0/4 against Hungary, he's about two-meters tall and that's all there is to him. He's not too mobile and he often limps and holds his knee after 5-6 minutes, but this is still not enough for the Belarus coaching staff to give Harbuz more playing time.

However, there won't be too much problems with that as Belarus beat Hungary two days ago. They were very excited, safe in the knowledge that they have passed their group, perhaps unaware that the spent most of the match playing against the Hungary's second-choice squad. Csoknyai sporadically used first-choice pivot Banhidi and middle-back Trteli, while their top wingers and shooters were rested for some 50 minutes.

- We are playing better and better as the tournament goes on. I can't find the words for this win, a lot of emotions is going about; this is incredible. We have fought the entire game to get such an important win. Now our teams spirit is even stronger and we can see what we can do in the upcoming games - said Hušakov at the end of the game, even though he didn't play too much against Hungary.

As usual, Hungary depended on Hadkevich and Gajduchenko, the right-back Smolikau did his share and their biggest bonus is that the performance of their pivots is increasing as the tournament goes on. Both Mirko and Karalek have had a good tournament in terms of offense, but their defense is something else.

Not just them, but their whole team has been very poor in this domain. True, they conceded only 24 goals against Hungary, but considering the very slow tempo of the game, that's not a small figure. In addition, Hungary didn't score a single goal from the counters as Csoknyai decided he could practice his team's organized actions for the upcoming games. Today they're facing a team with a much better counter and a team who will certainly not spare them, and the Belarus defense hasn't done too good in this aspect. The transition has been their sore spot this entire tournament and it should come as no surprise if it proves to be fatal for them today, as was the case against much weaker Israel.

The margin is set lower as expected after Belarus and Hungary's game was limited to 49 goals. That game was horrible to watch, it was 60 minutes of Hungary not being able to score a single fast-break goal, despite Belarus being famous for conceding easily like that. It wasn't like they couldn't have scored - coach's task was simply to practice attacks against zone defense. I don't believe Norway will have a task like that today. I think this is the perfect match for them to score some goals for the stats since they have good-quality players for counter-attacks, like Pedersen on the wing. On the other hand, Belarus have a pretty fast pace, which is expected today, especially because they had a day off yesterday. They also don't have a goal keeper at a high level, which should be enough to go over the modest 50 goals. Of course, we can't forget that the back players at Belarus managed to destroy Norway at the last EC, in a match with over 70 goals scored.