WC 2011 in Sweden Predictions: Croatia goes for gold!

When we made a predictions for Women’s EHF EURO 2010, we “captured” 3 of 4 semifinalist and hit the winner, Norway and bronze team, Romania. That’s why Handball-Planet.com team try to test knowledge or lucky again on coming Men’s World Championship in Sweden (13 – 30 January).

Medals winners:
1. CROATIA (With fantastic semi season in their teams around Europe and with no huge healthy problems, Croatia is on the way to repeat Portugal 2003 and finish on the TOP.
2. FRANCE (Injuries of Gille and Narcisse are big problems for French team. With no real replacement for Fernandez and Karabatić in 10 games, we can’t say that “triple” champions are the first favorite.
3. SPAIN (It is time for comeback. World Champions from 2005 with Rivera on the bench are ready for something big. Experienced players, also a coach and maybe easier part of the draw, give them a chance to enter battle for medals)

Other places:
4. POLAND (Big generation of Polish handball, still need more to become a winner at some big event. They will show their qualities, but probably will be defeated in most important matches).
5. SWEDEN (Host team hasn’t real quality for semifinal, but they will be on the edge for this. With their fans and atmosphere, a little wind from a refferes, they will achieve the highest place from “the others”).
6. ICELAND (Crucial match for semifinal will be one against Spain. We think that is time for ASOBAL boys, but who know. With Iceland you never know).
7. DENMARK (Loss of Hvidt, Jorgensen and Knudsen will take effect on their performances. In company with host team, Croatia and Poland, they will probably fall out first two places).
8. NORWAY (Even they think about semifinal, they don’t have a quality for that, but still, they are very danger team and probably will make some problems to “better”.
9. SERBIA (Some TOP individuals, probably won’t make a team. Serbia is the squad, who can beat everyone, but the biggest problem is continuity and lack of experience at big tournament for something really big.
10. HUNGARY (Hungarians have a team for second round, but nothing more. Still, they can play on high level, maybe not all the games…)
11. GERMANY (An average team with so high ambitions. That is normal, when you know how much is handball popular in Germany, but still, lack of TOP players and sometimes “boring” play aren’t something for a optimism).
12. SOUTH KOREA (Always nobody knows anything about them, but form from Bercy showed that they can play against Europeans. Game against Slovakia are they final.

Good luck for all the teams.

HANDBALL-PLANET TEAM