Fears about the semi-finals: Nils Lichtlein, Timo Kastening (right) and the national handball team Image: dpa
Former handball world champion Florian Kehrmann talks in an interview about the hierarchy of the German team at the European Championships, the importance of Juri Knorr and enthusiastic feedback from abroad.
You became world champions with Germany in Cologne in 2007. Can this hall also paralyze you?
This is not a burden, but pure joy. In important phases, the hall also helped to save the draw against Austria on Saturday.
Are the expectations of the team too high?
The problem after the opening game against Switzerland was that everyone started dreaming that we had to become European champions. The game against Iceland was viewed far too poorly. That was a win against an individually better team. And now the semi-final is still possible. But we are not Denmark, which has games under control after 40 minutes and then wins by five goals. Denmark, France, Sweden are the three big nations. Then comes Norway. And then a lot of people come – and us. We now have two tasks against Hungary and Croatia, games we can win, and then we’ll be in the semi-finals – and that would be a huge success.