Advance sales were released on November 26th. Exactly one year later, the women’s handball world championship begins in Germany and the Netherlands on November 26, 2025 (until December 14). The German team will first play in Stuttgart and then in Dortmund and, if they go really far, then in Rotterdam at the end. But that remains to be seen.
The European Championships are currently taking place in Vienna and Debrecen. The German handball players missed their last chance to reach the semi-finals on Saturday evening in Vienna with a 22:30 defeat against Olympic bronze medalist Denmark. The game for fifth place is hardly possible anymore because they lost 22:29 to the Netherlands in the preliminary round.
This Monday, Germany will face Olympic champion Norway (6 p.m., sportdeutschland.tv) and if for nothing else, this game is suitable for a third check of how far the German team is from the current world’s best one year before the home World Cup Handball is away. The last game with German participation at this European Championship is on Wednesday (3:30 p.m.) against Slovenia.
The home World Cup should be a turning point
“With the home World Cup as a catalyst, women’s handball should be raised to a new stage here,” Mark Schober, chairman of the board of the German Handball Association, had said before the European Championships, but for this purpose the association would have hoped for a better performance in a signaling manner. The fact that we had clearly won against Ukraine, Iceland and Switzerland, that we were leading 10:4 against the Netherlands after twelve minutes and that we were level against Denmark until 18:18 after 38 minutes was hardly any consolation in the end. “Ultimately we have to accept: We are where we belong,” says the new sports director Ingo Meckes.
Germany’s handball players have been hanging between tree and bark for 16 years now. The last time they reached the semi-finals of a major tournament was in 2008. “We are no better at the moment, we have to accept that,” said left winger Antje Döll after the clear defeat against Denmark.
“The consistency isn’t high enough,” Gaugisch also confirms about his team’s sometimes earlier and sometimes later slumps. The 50-year-old draws clear conclusions from the experiences of the past few years and the past few days: “You have to see the reality, we are currently in the area between sixth and eighth place and there is a huge gap forward.” This realization is also “ disappointing”, but if you want to be better, then things in the game have to work over 60 minutes.
Sports director Meckes also sent this appeal. In international comparison you are only “somewhere in the middle” and you have to “use every game to break through that”. And the same applies against Norway: “We have to hold off for 60 minutes!”
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