February 28, 2020 - The International Handball Federation has announced that Croatia, Norway, and Denmark will host the 2025 Handball World Championships!

This exciting news was confirmed on Friday by the International Handball Federation (IHF), which has allocated hosts for all major championships over the next five years.

Gol.hr reports that for the fourth time in history, Croatia will host one major handball competition. Namely, they will host the four groups of the first round, two groups of the second round, two quarterfinals and one semifinal. Everything else will be played in northern Europe with the Norwegian capital Oslo as the venue for the third-place game and final.

The need for so many cities (Copenhagen and Herning in Denmark, Trondheim, Stavanger, Drammen and Oslo in Norway) is because this will be the third World Championship in a row with 32 national teams.

This is the first time since 2009 that the World Championships will be played in Croatia. At that time, Lino Cervar's squad lost in the final to France, but the championship was marked by a great atmosphere in Croatian arenas.

Croatia has already organized Euro 2000 and 2018 as far as major competitions are concerned, but the Croatia handball team was not able to win a medal (fifth and sixth place).

In addition to the Senior World Cup, this year, Croatia will host the Women's Under-19 Handball World Championships and the 2023 Handball World Championships for the same year. 

The Croatia men's team played a fantastic European Championship earlier this year, where they finished second.

The next challenge for the Croatia handball team is the Olympic Qualifying Tournament, to be held in France from April 17 to 19 this year in the famous Bercy Hall. In order for Croatia to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, they will open against France, at 9 pm on April 17.  A day later, they will play against Portugal from 6:30 pm and then, on April 19, against Tunisia at 6:30 pm.

The games against France and Portugal are marked as crucial, in which the ‘Cowboys’ must record at least one victory.

The top two teams in each group will go to Tokyo.

To read more about sport in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page.

November 6, 2019 - The International Handball Federation has decided on the hosts for the Olympic Handball Qualifiers... and Croatia could be one of them. 

Gol.hr reports that before the European Championships, which will be played in Austria, Norway, and Sweden from January 9 to 26, 2020, the International Handball Federation (IHF) has designated the hosts of the qualifying tournaments for the Olympic Games in Tokyo next year. 

The tournaments will be played in the spring of next year, from April 17-19, and each of the two best teams will compete in the Tokyo Olympics.

France, Germany, and Norway were selected as hosts, while Croatia was named as the reserve country. 

So, what exactly does this mean?

A total of 12 teams will compete in the Tokyo Olympics, four of which are already known: Japan automatically qualifies as the host, Denmark as world champion, Argentina as the winner of the Pan-American Games and Bahrain as the winner of the Asian Qualifying Tournament.

There are eight more spots open, and one of them will be known at the end of the upcoming European Championships. Namely, the best national team at the Euros, not counting Denmark, who has already qualified, will also secure their spot in Tokyo.

Thus, if Denmark takes the gold, then the European Championship finalist will book the spot for the Olympics. This is why it could be important for Croatia.

Namely, if one of the three teams designated to host the qualifying tournaments (France, Germany, Norway) wins the European Championship title (or loses to Denmark in the final), then the qualifying tournament will not be played in that country but in Croatia, which will step in as the first reserve.

Croatia has already hosted this qualifying tournament once, and namely, back in 2012 when the Cowboys locked their spot for the London Olympics in Varazdin, defeating the national teams of Iceland, Japan, and Chile.

This time, the competition will undoubtedly be much stronger, and it could only help Croatia if they were to secure their spot for Tokyo at one of the Croatian halls, in an atmosphere that would be excellent.

However, the best-case scenario, of course, would be if Croatia were to skip this qualifying tournament all together… though they’d have to become the European champion first.

To read more about sport in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page.