Foreshadow, part 2: Hungary in the European championship

 

The European championship starts on Friday in Croatia. In the second part of our foreshadow article we will look at the Hungarian national team, which will play in Group D in Varazdin against Denmark, Spain and Czech Republic.

 

The national team has spent the last 2 weeks training and forming the team. Ljubomir Vranjes can only nominate 16 players to play but both in trainings and games 18 players prepared for the EURO.

 

 

The composition of the team is different from the last time, because many experienced players have retired from playing in the national team. László Nagy retired with 199 caps, because he felt like giving opportunity to the younger generation in this Olympic period. Szabolcs Zubai and Nándor Fazekas also retired from the national team, while Gergő Iváncsik and Péter Gulyás retired from playing handball. Gergely Harsányi was dropped from the squad by the coaching staff. Their experience has to be replaced by the youngsters.

 

Speaking of youngsters, 3 rookie was introduced to the squad: Dávid Fekete, Donát Bartók and Ádám Országh are all preparing for their first major tournament. All players have shown during the training camp that they want a place for themselves in the traveling squad.

 

There are 6 players from Telekom Veszprém in the national team: Jamali Iman, Timuzsin Schuch, Gábor Ancsin, Patrik Ligetvári, Roland Mikler and Máté Lékai. Lékai will probably have a leading role in the European championship, as this young team will need the experience he has. He is the second best top scorer in the Champions League and he shows his talent every night he steps on court. Besides him the tower of defense can be Timuzsin Schuch, who was the captain of the team in the last two friendly games.

 

 

The Hungarian team played 2 games in the name of preparation befor the EURO. Both of them were against Sweden, in Jönköping and Partille. The first match ended in a 29:29 draw although we had a 4 goals lead in the game. Our team played well and did not get scared from the higher-level opponent. Jamali, Lékai and Ancsin scored 2 goals from Veszprém. The second game was an obvious one, the Swedish team had the lead from the first minute and we could only get closer to them. The match ended in 31:29 with Ligetvári and Ancsin scoring 1, Jamali scored 2 while Lékai bagged 5 goals.

 

Our first opponent in Croatia will be Denmark on 13 January at 8:30 p.m. The Eastern team played in the Golden League in France as preparation. Besides them France, Norway and Egypt participated in the tournament. Every team defeated Egypt, so did the Danish. After that they lost to Norway but the next day they won against the World champions France. Thanks to their better goal difference they clinched the first place but because the “big names” all beat each other they can only enjoy the triumph hand in hand with France and Norway.

 

 

Our second opponent will be Spain, next Monday, 15 January at 6:15 p.m. A Spanish has organized their own tournament with Belarus, Poland and Argentina. The result is undoubtable; they won every game and prepared well for their EURO debut.

 

Third and final opponent of our Group will be the Czech Republic, next Wednesday, 17 January at 6:15 p.m. It is a unanimous opinion by both players and journalists that our real opponent will be the Czech; we will have to battle against them for the 3rd place in the group. They played two preparation games and won both against Austria. The first game ended 35:21, while the second ended 23:26.

 

In conclusion we can say that with a young national team and a new national coach the goal is to proceed from the group, but what is more important is that the core of the team get used to each other. This year we have to qualify for the World championships from where we can qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Our opponents closed their preparations on a good role, so the boys will face tough teams, that is certain.

 

Let’s go Hungary!

 

 

Phot: keziszovetseg.hu