January 20, 2020 - Could Croatia co-host the Handball World Championship in 2025? Maybe, and with the help of Denmark and Norway.
HRT reports that three great handball nations have come up with the idea of hosting the World Championship together. It will be a competition that will go down in history as the first to feature 32 national teams. The nomination was presented in Vienna, in the middle of the European Handball Championship, after Croatia defeated Germany.
In this deal, Croatia is ready to take on four groups before the competition, one major group, two quarterfinals and one semifinal. Denmark and Norway would share the rest.
The president of the Croatian Handball Federation, Tomislav Grahovac, points out that Croatia does not have enough funds to organize such a big competition by themselves.
“We think that both Denmark and Norway represent the world superpowers in addition to Croatia, and that for the first time, it would be the organization of such a great competition in cooperation between the Scandinavian countries and the countries from Central Europe and Southeastern Europe, however we position ourselves. This is something new and as the Croatian Handball Federation strives to be the first, and especially at the front of all new things in handball, co-hosting this World Championship is also one of the first steps towards organizing major competitions and such collaborations,” says Grahovac.
It is no secret that Croatia already has four halls prepared for this kind of competition: Arena Zagreb, Arena Split, Arena Varaždin, Žatika in Poreč and the novelty is a hall in Dubrovnik that is yet to be built.
Presentations such as this one in Vienna have also taken place over the last few days in Malmö, where Denmark played, and Trondheim, where Norway played its European Championship matches.
The final host decision will be known in about a month.
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