But not everything was over, and the French left back is the best one to tell us the story.
“I knew I had to pass the block, catch the goal while shooting as hard as I could. When I threw the ball, I just prayed it would go inside the net. And it did,” Prandi said after the match.
His Paris Saint-Germain teammate, Swedish goalkeeper Andreas Palicka, could not do anything to stop the shot, going at 118km/h.
“It’s as simple as: I did not see the ball. And when the ball is going that fast, there is nothing you can do in such a small time,” explains the Swedish goalkeeper, adding: “I’ve never taken such a goal.”
His teammate Eric Johansson admits: “It’s one of those goals you see on TV but you never think it’s going to happen against you. And tonight, it did.”
Even Prandi’s teammates could not believe their own eyes. Some of them put their full trust in him, as Nikola Karabatic said after the game: “I was with Kentin Mahé and Valentin Porte and I was telling them that Elo was going to score.”
The French head coach Guillaume Gille let the players decide who would take the shot. With a twist of humour, he gives us his insight: “He could try to score this shot 10,000 times at home, and he probably would not score many. But he was in one of those days where he managed to do it. Good for us.”
So, 23 years after Grégory Anquetil pushed France and Sweden into extra time at the 2001 World Championship after scoring one of the most unexpected goals in history, it seems like history is repeating itself for France at the European championship.
“It’s one of the craziest goals I’ve ever seen in my life, especially in such a context, in a semi-final at the EHF EURO,” says goalkeeper Samir Bellahcene, before adding: “This might actually be the best goal I’ve seen in my career.”
