The Icelandic national team in men’s handball played their last game at the World Cup in Qatar tonight when they were beat by Denmark and their former coach Guðmundur Guðmundsson, 25-30. Iceland will now return home while Denmark moves on to the quarter finals.
“Of course it’s a bummer to drop out of the competition … but it was fair that Denmark won the game,” commented Iceland’s coach Aron Kristjánsson to visir.is. “It’s very hard to play against Denmark when [Niklas] Ladin is playing so well,” Aron added of the Danish goalkeeper.
“It’s very hard to return to defense and make time for switching players and line up the defense when you can never really finish the offense against Denmark. But we continued throughout the game. We never gave up,” Aron stated.
As in most of their other games at the World Cup, Iceland started the game poorly and didn’t score until after seven minutes. By then, Denmark had gained a five point lead, which they maintained throughout the game. The score was 16-10 for Denmark at half time.
Not much changed in the second half, even though Iceland hung in there. Goalkeeper Björgvin Valur Gústavsson was Iceland’s best player, deflecting 17 shots, and Alexander Petersson, who scored the first goal, also scored the most goals for Iceland, seven.
However, Denmark were quick to take advantage of Iceland blowing shots, making clumsy mistakes and lacking focus, and they didn’t even have to make that much effort to win the game, ruv.is reports.
Iceland’s captain Guðjón Valur Sigurðsson told RÚV that Denmark was simply the better team. Björgvin agreed, adding that Iceland had made it too easy for Denmark.
Iceland ended up in 11th place. At the World Cup in Spain two years ago, Iceland placed 12th, mbl.is reports.
