After the bad World Cup performance, the German national handball team is working on returning to the top of the world. In the draw for the 2023 tournament, the DHB team will be assigned a feasible group – even if a name is still missing. But the preparation will be difficult.
The German handball players were lucky in the draw for the 28th World Cup from January 11th to 29th, 2023 in Poland and Sweden. The team of national coach Alfred Gislason will meet Qatar, Serbia and the fifth place in the upcoming Africa championship in the preliminary round of the 32-man tournament. At the ceremony in Katowice, the two former world handball players Magnus Wislander and Slawomir Szmal drew lots.
The preliminary round is played in eight groups of four. The top three from each group move into the four main round groups of six teams each. Should Germany advance, defending champions Denmark, Norway and Croatia would be possible opponents there. Only the top two teams from the main round advance to the knockout stages, starting with the quarterfinals.
27 of the 32 participants have been determined so far, only the five best of the upcoming Africa Championship are missing. The game will be played in nine cities, five in Sweden (Stockholm, Malmö, Jonköping, Kristianstad, Gothenburg) and four in Poland (Katowice, Kraków, Plock, Gdansk).
Germany will play their Group E preliminary round matches at the 11,000+ capacity Spodek Arena in Katowice. The games are scheduled for the 13th against Qatar, on the 15th against Serbia and on January 17th against the Africa representative. The German team has qualified for a World Cup finals for the 13th time in a row, but could not completely convince. Gislason still has a lot to do before the climax with his young, internationally relatively inexperienced team.
But the opportunities to work together are rare. The next DHB course will not start until autumn, there will be no more compulsory games for the national team until the new year, since Germany, as the host of the 2024 European Championship, does not have to qualify.
At the last World Cup in 2021 in Egypt, Germany only finished twelfth – it was the worst place in the 25 tournaments that have been played so far. A DHB men’s team has been world champion in indoor handball three times: in 1938, 1978 and 2007.
