Portugal make second-half comeback; Israel take point in Poland
Just like the day before, the home teams were dominant in the Round 1 of the EHF EURO 2026 Qualifiers, but while the visitors had failed to earn a single point on Wednesday, now Israel managed to get a draw in Poland – and they were actually close to a stunning win.
In the same Group 8, Portugal turned things around in the Highlight Match against Romania, while in Group 6, Netherlands beat Ukraine in another exciting clash.
I am happy to return to the national team jersey finally. They reminded me that 606 days have passed since my last appearance. That is quite a while, but it seems like it only was a few months. The most important thing is that we won and continued with a series of good performances.
Unfortunately, in the second half, we lost our discipline and did not fulfil what we said in the dressing room. We were competitive in the first 30 minutes, but after the break, we made too many technical mistakes, which the opponent teams, like Slovenia, always punish.
I am happy with the win, it was a little bit uncertain at the beginning of the match, but we managed to play better and to win in the end. Some players played for the first time and it’s nice to see that we have a good team. Many thanks to our supporters who were great!
We started good and we held back Croatia for little period of time, but in the end it's a bit frustrating that the result was this big. We are a new group, we have a new coach and we have to get in the rhythm and get better in the next matches..
‘We’re happy with the two points because it was a really tough game. 79 goals are talking for themselves, in defence we could’ve been better. Looking forward to Kosovo, we know it will also be a tough game and that we have to do a better defence game.
It was an amazing game, with great spectators and a good atmosphere. But of course it’s also disappointing, because we lost. But now we have more information on what we need to improve for the next match.
I'm very happy with the win and the way the team played. Due to the lack of some players, we didn't know where we stood, but thanks to the very good defence and Andy Wolff, we got into the game perfectly and put a lot of pressure on Switzerland via the second wave. I was also pleased with the players’ enthusiasm.
We had too much respect for Andreas Wolff and the German defence was fantastic. We lacked leaders on the court today and I also made mistakes as a coach. You should have fun in a handball match, we didn't have that today, we didn't stand a chance.
Today, we were the biggest rival for ourselves. We did not meet our pre-match goals, especially in the first half. After the break, our game was better, but still not as good as we would like. The first half decided the course of the match, because the rivals believed in a good result and it was difficult to stop them.
With this coach, David, who has been with us only five days, we did something amazing. We did not have much time to prepare, so if someone said to me that we would come to Poland, have a draw and be disappointed? No way! It is great for us, for our sport and our country.
In the first half we had some difficulty adapting to their attack, with a lot of successful outside shots and the pivot was outrunning so we had some hard times. In the second half, we stepped up on defence and put more pressure on their game and it ended up resulting in some easy goals and the seven goals is an amazing difference for us.
We started really good, surprisingly good, with the help from our goalkeeper but in the second half we didn't manage to keep the rhythm and we knew from the beginning we were going to face a powerful Portugal team that's why they ended in 7th place in the euro but for 50 minutes we managed to keep the rhythm.
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