Julian Köster’s long spurt of celebration is already one of the images of this European Handball Championship. And should you ever be looking for the moment that set the German national team on the wave they were hoping for, here it was: Thursday evening, Arena zu Deutz, 19,750 people witnessed a dramatic game in which the fighting, erratic Germans 38 Leading 25:24 seconds before the end.
Captain Johannes Golla received a time penalty. Five field players struggle against six offensive Icelanders to hold onto the ball, to somehow let the agonizingly slowly ticking seconds pass. Then playmaker Juri Knorr slips on the halfway line, the ball seems to be at the opponent, but he brings it to Köster while he is lying on the ground.
Suddenly a gap opens up – Köster recognizes it, runs through this corridor, reaches the Icelandic goal and throws the ball in with all his strength: 26:24. Germany’s chances of reaching the semi-finals of this European Championship remain. And Köster turns around and rows wildly into the opposite curve before the team buries him.
“Icelanders weren’t bad”
This monk? The beau from Bielefeld? Who always chooses his words so carefully and rarely comes out of his shell? “If you close a game like this at home in Cologne, I would have been worried if he had run back without making a face,” said national coach Alfred Gislason later. Köster lives in Cologne and plays for nearby VfL Gummersbach.
There was a lot to talk about after this first main round game. The strong Icelanders were not at all reminiscent of the team that had cheated their way through the first phase of the tournament. Supported by many professionals from the Bundesliga, they didn’t let up at all and the Germans had the lead at 20:19 with ten minutes to go.
It remained so close because the selection of the German Handball Association failed to turn goalkeeper Andreas Wolff’s many saves into anything more than a razor-thin lead – missed throws kept slowing down the Germans, because there was an equal man in Iceland’s goal that evening in Viktor Hallgrimsson .
“The Icelanders really weren’t bad,” said backcourt player Christoph Steinert with respect on his 34th birthday, “they defended really well and put everything into this game. Andi keeps us in the game, but we hardly score any quick goals because the Icelanders always run back so quickly. In the end, a lot of weight just fell off my heart.”
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This 26:24 (11:10) was quite a struggle. There was no question of any flow of the game. But it was more than just a victory, because for the first time in this tournament we experienced a real handball atmosphere at a German game. By the 52nd minute at the latest, the Cologne Arena was as loud as it always claims to be.
22:21, 23:21, 24:22 by Juri Knorr in the 57th minute, it was already exciting enough to bite your nails. Wolff saved two seven-meter shots from the Icelanders as he blocked almost everything from the close throw zone, but little from distance. And then Knorr’s pass came to Köster in an emergency: “Julian has 15 centimeters longer hands than Isi, so he stayed on the ball,” said Gislason with a laugh.
Isi? He can abbreviate his compatriots like that without it sounding disrespectful, as he also said with relief: “There was so much fuss about me as an Icelander against Iceland. I’m just happy that we won.” He couldn’t take the numerous relatives in the arena into account.
Again it was Wolff, Johannes Golla, Köster and Knorr who carried the German game; Knorr played with light and shadow in the attack, appearing so focused that he was no longer aware of his surroundings. But Gislason had also changed a lot, especially at the beginning, when Kai Häfner was allowed to rest for later, and Köster also got breaks.
Martin Hanne, Justus Fischer and Renars Uscins struggled, but reached their limits against the Champions League-hardened Icelanders. Rune Dahmke played his part in the victory as a driver and mood-maker, Sebastian Heymann scored two important goals. “Winning even a close game helps us a lot,” said Dahmke.
The progress can already be demonstrated this Saturday (8.30 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Handball Championship, on ARD and on Dyn) against Austria. A win is needed again to get one of the first two places. After the success against Hungary, the Austrians are in seventh heaven – a situation that should not last, said Andreas Wolff: “They have the feeling of being invincible. It’s our job to end this feeling.”