15:00
Did you catch our brand new documentary last night? Founding Fathers tells the story of the evolution of Danish handball, by those who were involved in it. Legends of the sport such as Lars Christiansen, Kasper Hvidt and Lasse Svan spent a day hanging out with the current stars, including Mathias Gidsel and Emil Nielsen. They ate, drank, chatted, gathered firewood and ended the day with beers and sausages on the beach. Everything was filmed and the insights are remarkable.
We caught up with Gidsel and his teammates at their photoshoot this morning, when the right back said that the men he met for the documentary were those who had made him want to be a handball player.
Gidsel added: "It was a pleasure to meet them, to hear about their experiences, and also to understand that this generation that we have is because of them. They have been doing a lot of good things for Danish handball, also tried some failures, and learned from that. That’s maybe the greatest thing to do in life, is to learn from mistakes.”
Watch the full documentary now on YouTube (or bookmark it for later - it's 75 minutes long).
14:30
Although teams were able to pick their initial lists of 35 players late last year, they can only nominate 20 for the final tournament - picking 16 for each match an hour before the game starts.
A number of teams have seen key players ruled out through injury, with Slovenia hardest-hit, losing a raft of stars including most recently their EHF EURO 2024 top scorer Aleks Vlah, and goalkeeper Klemen Ferlin. France had to replace EHF EURO 2024 MVP Nédim Rémili, who has had a calf injury, and Norway must play without Harald Reinkind who has a foot injury.
We've collated all the latest team announcements for you - click here.
We have to remain confident in ourselves, knowing that we are a strong team, even though we might have a more underdog status than we had in the past. Hopefully, the fans can give us an energy boost and allow us to give even more on the court.
You are never really prepared for this kind of event. I don’t remember a competition where I arrived and said, OK, now we can play because we have done everything we wanted. We did a lot of work in the preparation, prepared for a lot of different scenarios. We played two interesting games last weekend, with two victories over Austria and Iceland. We are ready to start and excited.
