Defending champion Germany has started into the European Handball Championship 2018 in Croatia with a kerb victory. The DHB team beat Montenegro in the Arena Zagreb 32:19 (17:9). The second game starts on Monday against Slovenia (18.10 hrs in LIVETICKER).
National coach Christian Prokop started with Maximilian Janke in defence and attack. However, after a good ten minutes, the man from Leipzig received his second two-minute penalty after just over ten minutes and from then on braised on the bench until the middle of the second half. Uwe Gensheimer was temporarily spared in the defence, but Philipp Weber defended for him on the left. Patrick Wiencek and Hendrik Pekeler formed the trunk central block.
After the first few minutes, in which Germany had minor difficulties with Montenegro’s extremely offensive defence, the defending champions continued to lose ground. The DHB team showed an attractive performance in attack and defence. However, Montenegro, which had to forego its top performers Nebojsa Simic (goalkeeper, Melsungen) and Vuko Borozan (rear room on the left, Vardar Skopje) due to injury, soon proved hopeless.
The Serbian coach Dragan Djukic’s team was completely harmless in the attack, good Andreas Wolff got a lot of balls on his chest, which were easy to defend. After 15 minutes, Germany led the match 7:3 and went on to 17:9 until the break.
Also in the second 30 minutes the Prokop team had everything under control. After 40 minutes it was 23:12, the rest of the game was a better training session. The national coach took advantage of this and helped all the players in the squad to find their time.
After 50 minutes Silvio Heinevetter came into the match for Wolff (12 of 26.46 percent of the balls held). The European Championship hero of 2016 had been slightly injured and had to be treated sitting on the bench.
Fifteen seconds before the end of the match Janke took his third time penalty and thus the red card.
Initial formation DHB: Wolff – Gensheimer, Janke, Weber, Weinhold, Reichmann, Pekeler
Goal scorers Germany: Gensheimer (9 – 5 out of 6 seven meters), Drux (5), Weinhold, Weber, Kühn, Kohlbacher (all 3), Wiencek, Häfner (both 2), Reichmann, Fäth (both 1)
Scorers Montenegro: Lipovina (7), Bozovic (4), Andjelic (2), Markovic, M. Vujovic, S. Vujovic, Sevaljevic, Lasica, Simovic, (all 1)
Two-minute time penalties: Germany 7 – Montenegro 4
The captain forgave his first seven-metre shot, but from then on he played well. He was the best thrower with ten goals and turned out to be 9 out of 10 and thus 90 percent of his throws.
Several Montenegrin players deserve to be mentioned here. Backroom player Sevaljevic, however, had a particularly bad day. He only changed one of his four attempts, failed with a seven-metre shot against Wolff and played some bad passes.