Sweden and France to write one more episode in long saga

“Is that a rivalry? I don’t quite know, but of course there is a history between the two teams. When you make it to the competition’s final weekend, you always play against the best teams and France and Sweden are among them,” explains France head coach Guillaume Gille.

Sweden won the semi-final between the two teams at the 2021 World Championship (32:26) and at the EHF EURO 2022 (34:33), but France won the last episode in Stockholm just a year ago at the World Championship (31:26).

And this loss seems to still be on Andreas Palicka’s mind.

“It still hurts. When you play a championship at home, you have big expectations. We beat them twice before, they had made their homework, and I think France played their best game in some years. They gave a really strong performance. When you lose a semi-final at home, it’s painful. If you function as I do, this kind of memories will be with you for the rest of your life,” says the goalkeeper.

The French players are also keen on showing that their success from last year was not entirely due to the absence of Jim Gottfridsson in the Swedish camp.

“They are leading two-one at the moment, and some say we won just because he was not there. We’ll definitely see about that on Friday,” said Nédim Rémili after the last win in the main round for France.

The rivalry has become even more present between the two teams, and especially for the Swedish goalkeeper, as he has been playing for Paris Saint-Germain since 2023. While he shares a locker room in the French capital city with both Karabatic brothers and Elohim Prandi, Palicka was asked to give his opinion on whether playing against his club teammates could give him an advantage in tomorrow’s game.

“They also know me, so I think it’s 50-50. Of course, when you are in your national team, you try to give your partners as much info as possible on the players you know so you can win titles,” Palicka says.

France are the only team that has not known defeat since arriving in Germany in early January. Even though Switzerland got a point from them in the preliminary round, they made sure they would end the main round taking maximum points, unlike Sweden and Denmark.

“We will definitely not look at the last game from Sweden to prepare the semi-final,” says France captain Luka Karabatic. “We had a different approach and tried to keep our momentum going by winning against Hungary.”

No matter what the result will be on Friday night, one thing is now for sure. While Sweden used to be on the top of European handball 20 years ago, the two sides can now look at each other in the eyes, much to Guillaume Gille’s pleasure.

“We used to take blows against them, and we learnt our lessons the hard way. But Sweden have always been a model for us, in a way, and they helped us growing up,” concludes the French head coach.

“Sweden are a benchmark in European handball, just are France, and we can just be proud that we will playing against each other again in the semi-final on Friday.”

Photos © Kolektiff Images