Croatian women’s handball team led by Nenad Sostarić gathered in Zagreb on Monday, where on March 21 at 6 pm at the Sports Center host Norway in the qualifications for the European Championship 2018, and four days after, on March 25, the second match in Bekkesti, suburb of Oslo.
After the victory over Switzerland (32:28) and the defeat in the hosts in Ukraine (22:26) Croatian handball players are ranked second in the group with the same number of points (2) as Ukraine, and behind Norway, which has a one-hundredth point effect, while the last place without points Switzerland.
In the first two matches, Norway made two convincing victories, home-made against Ukraine (35:22) and visiting in Switzerland (29:12), which justified the role of favorite of the group. For years, the Norwegians have been at the very top of the world, with gold medals from all major competitions, the current European champions and world champions second.
– It’s the team that has been running women’s handball for the last ten years. We are looking for a chance, first of all, with our defensive game and returning back and here It starts everything. This is the basis from which everything moves and every time a national team did not allow Norway to extract it, it was a chance, said coach Nenad Sostarić, who has a clear picture of what he would like to see from his players in these matches.
– I would like to pair in the running, so that they do not give us goals from the fastbreak. So similar to what the male team did, to do the job perfectly. To play a compact and high-quality defense, and at the stage of the attack, we are smart enough not to get used to half-shots. They play these Swedish 6-0 at seven meters and continually give some half-position to the pass pivot, and then still those six-seven balls. We need to be smart enough here, but I think the base is running. The basis is the energy part, running in both directions, and especially the return to defense. We just have to show this energy part that we can and how much we can, because the speed is one of the basic factors for the future of women’s handball, and therefore we have to do our best, concluded Šoštarić.
