EHF EURO 2026 BLOG BY ZIKA BOGDANOVIC: Machine from Euskirchen
There are matches during which a shout of pure joy can burst out of your chest—simply because you’re there to witness them. Tonight was one of those. And the director and lead actor was Andreas Wolff.
Twenty-two saves in the end—and what saves. What he stopped, how he stopped it, and when he stopped it: poetry and prose. Comedy and tragedy.
We’ve been waiting for the Norwegians to come back to us after all these years. It looked like they were ready. Grøndahl has become a serious player, Bergerud is back on the map, we were waiting for Sagosen to say, “I’m not a former player—you just think I am,” but everything was ruined by the wolf from Euskirchen. When he saw it wasn’t going his team’s way, he bolted the door and swallowed the key—like any host defending his own house.
Those few Norwegian one-on-ones, and then Wolff’s back-to-back saves around the 40th minute, when the game was still in the balance—followed by that roar toward his attack, “Come on, you lot, do something too!”—that will live forever in handball history.
And in elite sport, nothing is accidental.
When I remember that the same Andi Wolff—just a few days after a Champions League defeat, when most people are licking their wounds from a brutal season—goes to visit friends and books slots on boats, desperate to escape handball as much as possible… yet still spends hours with kids in a hall at 30 degrees in Omiš, then goes to the gym, then keeps working until exhaustion… none of this surprises me anymore.
I’m happy every time I see what he does in goal, and I remember how, a little irritated, he explains: “Players have to train more over the summer—there can’t be any stopping. In that sense, handball lags behind American sports.”
A machine.
A foot doesn’t just hover at two and a half meters for five seconds for no reason…
In the end, only the strongest remain—exactly what we expected before it all began: the triumvirate of Danes, Germans, and French. Portugal are simply a bit short for this every-two-days marathon that pulls everything out of a man, and they don’t have a goalkeeper—an old-school dragon. Norway and Spain aren’t that league, after all.
How did such an imbalance in group quality happen between Herning and Malmö? No offense to anyone—someone will win a medal out of Herning and rub critics’ noses in it anyway—but the difference is obvious. Still, the guys playing in Malmö Arena don’t need to worry. That’s sport.
If we’re talking luck, Slovenia are already European champions considering their problems before the tournament and the squad they arrived with. The second half against the Swedes showed that loss of breath, that inability to sustain the level when, on the other side, you have masters—both offensive and defensive.
Sweden are a well-preserved Volvo—before the Chinese took it under their wing—the kind that will never betray you. Not overly fast, but stable.
Hungary are not Sweden at this tournament.
With Martinović or without him, Croatia have a sitter against Switzerland. Maraš against Iceland showed handball as it once was—because if this continues, goals from beyond nine meters really will be worth two points, just like Veselin Vujović suggested. While we wait for the pivot’s shirt to be lifted, or for the centre back to offer his neck to a defensive giant for carving, Maraš’s stuff feels like: “Oh—so this is still allowed in handball?”
The silver vibe is still there. You could see it against Iceland—along with the desire to prove to the handball world that Zagreb wasn’t a fluke.
Iceland are a disappointment. Gísli and company seem to lose some superpower they carry in the jerseys of Magdeburg, Barcelona and other top clubs. Maybe let them wear their club shirts underneath—or call Bennet Wiegert to put things in order…
