Men's Handball IHF World Championship 2023 Road to Paris 2024

[Belle 720]

12 minutes ago, Vektor said:

@Belle You will have a lot of supporters outside of your country tomorrow. 

 

The frontpage of the Hungarian National Sport with the headline: "Go Sweden!" 

 

Haha good to hear.

 

Even if Sweden will rest players the players that will play need to show themselves. Actually for Sweden’s motivation I think it’s better other players will take bigger responsibility in the match against Portugal 

[JoshMartini007 2,202]

Going into the final set of matches of the main round let's look at the Olympics qualification implications.

 

While it is still possible for Brazil to reach the quarterfinals, it would require not only for them to defeat Iceland, but for Sweden to beat Portugal (good chance, even if they rest some players) and Cape Verde to defeat Hungary (less likely) and for Brazil to make up a 24 goal deficit against Portugal. Assuming that doesn't happen then Africa and Europe will be the top two continents and at their respective continental qualifiers two nations will advance to the final qualification tournament while for Asia and Pan America only one nation will advance.

 

Should Egypt (assuming they don't win the World Championship quota) or one of the European nations in the quarterfinals win their continent qualifier then the 9th place team will advance to the final Olympic qualifier. Should both scenarios happen then the 10th place will also join them. There are no 9th-12th ranking matches. The third place teams from each group will be ranked based on their group performance. Let's look at the chances for each nation to finish 9th or 10th.

 

Group I

Should the final matches go as expected, will most likely finish 10th. The nation has a great goal differential (+17) and faces Montenegro where they are favoured to win. Assuming they win, they will only have to watch Serbia to hope they don't win by 6 more goals than they did against Montenegro. While a draw for Slovenia won't completely kill their chances they will have to hope for a bunch of results to go their way. Slovenia could finish 9th, but would require Croatia to draw or lose their final match. While is able to finish third in their group it is mathematically impossible for them to finish 9th or 10th.

 

Group II

This is the most complicated group as four teams have an opportunity to finish third. has the least chance at finishing 10th as they would have to defeat Iceland by 22 goals AND then hope results in the other groups go their way. is in a similar boat in the event they finish third (though actually finishing third would take specific scenarios, they are much more likely to finish second or fourth) due to their horrible goal differential where they would either need to completely demolish Cape Verde or hope for draws in the other groups. has the goal differential (+7) to not have to rely on crazy results, but probably needs to hope Slovenia fails to defeat Montenegro. Netherlands defeating or drawing Serbia would be a huge help too. actually has a good goal differential (+15), but really needs a draw against Sweden so they can have 6 points, but would still require a bunch of results to go their way.

 

Group III

is the nation on the outside looking in. They technically have control over their destiny and have the added bonus of knowing how many goals they need to win by in order to finish in the top 10. The downside is the Netherlands likely won't go down that easily and Serbia probably needs to win by double digits to surpass Slovenia. Of course, Slovenia could just not win their match and things become a lot easier. not only needs to defeat Serbia, but probably requires Slovenia to not win as they likely won't make up that goal differential. Even if Slovenia chokes they need to hope Portugal doesn't end up in third and if it's Iceland they would have to outscore them against Serbia.

 

Group IV

could still finish third in the group, but that would require them to loss a 22 goal differential advantage over Croatia. In the event that does happen they are guaranteed to finish 9th. is most likely to finish 9th out of all the teams. They have arguable the easiest opponent among the teams discussed here and any victory guarantees them 9th or better. Even if they end with a draw, they are in a good position to finish in the top 10, but they would have to look at the other results and hope for no blowouts from Serbia or Iceland. In the event pulls off one of the largest upsets in this tournament, their goal differential is horrible where like Hungary they would need to hope for they other third place teams to fail to get 6 points (or have Hungary as one of the third place teams).

[soliwolf 2]

8 hours ago, Agger said:

Pretty unimpressive first half from Egypt 

actually Egypt is unimpressive since the start of the second half against Belgium

a lot of turnovers and missing a lot of easy chances 

 

wiether they are getting complacint or cant handle the pressure of being a main contender is remain to be seen  

[JoshMartini007 2,202]

Slovenia with a strong victory over Montenegro to put themselves in a strong position for a top 10 finish. Don't see Serbia winning by 14 against the Netherlands.

[prso1000 536]

8 minutes ago, JoshMartini007 said:

Slovenia with a strong victory over Montenegro to put themselves in a strong position for a top 10 finish. Don't see Serbia winning by 14 against the Netherlands.

And actually 10th place could be easier group to the Olympics than 9th place 😉. of course assuming Egypt takes the African quota and the European quota goes to one of the teams which will be here in Top8. Both scenarios are very likely. 

[JoshMartini007 2,202]

9 minutes ago, prso1000 said:

And actually 10th place could be easier group to the Olympics than 9th place 😉. of course assuming Egypt takes the African quota and the European quota goes to one of the teams which will be here in Top8. Both scenarios are very likely. 

I always thought it was a bit unfair that the lowest ranked nation would get such a favourable draw, but on the flip side it would also be unfair to have the highest ranked non-qualifier face two tough opponents while another group would only face one.

 

One option to fix this is to have a random draw for the six nations qualified via the continental qualifiers.

[Benolympique 1,588]

what are iceland's chances of being in the olympics

[JoshMartini007 2,202]

17 minutes ago, Benolympique said:

what are iceland's chances of being in the olympics

If they defeat Brazil by 19 goals and Portugal doesn't defeat Sweden then they will have a great chance .

 

More likely, they have a good chance at qualifying to the final qualifier through the European Championships. If they ended up being the second highest ranked eligible European nation they will be in a decent position to qualify.

Edited January 22, 2023 by JoshMartini007

[Laraja 1,364]

@JoshMartini007

 

Question for you. Let's suppose that  finishes in second place in both Worlds and Europe. Then they will take the spot to Repechage Tournament by Worlds, and the third and fourht places at Europe (if elegible) take the spots, right?

[JoshMartini007 2,202]

45 minutes ago, Laraja said:

@JoshMartini007

 

Question for you. Let's suppose that  finishes in second place in both Worlds and Europe. Then they will take the spot to Repechage Tournament by Worlds, and the third and fourht places at Europe (if elegible) take the spots, right?

Correct. In fact, the Worlds takes priority so even if Sweden finishes 8th, they will still take the Worlds quota for the final qualifier (unless they qualify to the Olympics outright via the European Championships).