The voices were rather muffled, but there were still booming words that could be heard in the Cologne Arena late Saturday evening. For Timo Kastening it was “absolute kamikaze handball”, Kai Häfner spoke of a “complete catastrophe”. And even if, for the sake of completeness, it has to be mentioned that both of them only referred to parts of the German game against Austria, it actually sounded like a heavy defeat. The images from the moment of the final siren also matched this, when the German players collapsed while the Austrians jumped around for joy.
In fact it was a bit more complicated, not only because there was no winner in this second main round game of the European Championship, the score was 22:22 after 60 minutes. But also because the Germans were already five goals behind in the second half (16:21, 48th), and because they then went into the last two minutes with a deficit of 21:22 and after a time penalty against Johannes Golla. In other words: things could have been worse. Alfred Gislason’s team had the abyss in sight, but found a little support, in the last resort thanks to Christoph Steinert’s powerful throw to make it 22:22. In the end, a victory would have been possible after the Austrians had missed their chance to score the final goal, but that would have been “unfair,” as Gislason said matter-of-factly.
Mathematically, the draw against their neighbors means that the Germans no longer have their way to the semi-finals in their own hands. Although in the best case scenario even a win from the last two games could be enough, the realistic projection is as follows: only an Austrian defeat and two own victories open the door to the final round. And even if there are good reasons to hope for the former, after all, the Austrians play against the French exceptional talents next, they first have to manage to win against Hungary on Monday and then against Croatia on Wednesday.
And even the national coach made this conditional. “If we continue to play like this in attack, we won’t win against Hungary and Croatia,” said Gislason, “that’s the way it is.” The performance against Austria left the disturbing impression of a team struggling to find its bearings. Captain Golla said: “You have to be very clear that this is not good enough at the level and with the targets we are setting out.”
What is the reason for the downward trend?
If you wanted to look at it positively, you could say that the Germans were mainly due to their miserable shooting rate (49 percent) and not insignificantly ricocheted off the Austrian goalkeeper Constantin Möstl, who saved 17 balls. This view was most clearly represented by Juri Knorr. “In the end we failed because of our free chances, but that doesn’t mean we played bad handball,” he said. However, that was a very optimistic view of things. If you look at the development in this tournament, you can clearly see a downward trend, which was already apparent in the narrow win against Iceland and seemed dramatic at times against Austria. And the question is, why is that?