
“It is clear that handball is a family sport” – Croatia/Denmark/Norway 2025 Closing Media Conference
February 4, 2025
“You are crazy people” – Sigurdsson and Croatia squad return to heroes’ welcome in Zagreb
February 5, 2025Denmark have completed another magnificent edition of the IHF Men’s World Championship, securing nine wins in nine matches – seven of them in double digits – and clinched their fourth consecutive title, an unprecedented feature in the history of the competition.
It has been one of the most dominating performances in the history of the competition, with no win coming by a margin lower than six goals, as Denmark never conceded three goals in a row until the 54th minute of the final against Croatia, when they were already up by eight goals.
What are the reasons behind this amazing run of form? What pushed Denmark over the top? We tried to find a few reasons and analyse how the Scandinavian side delivered such a fantastic and well-rounded performance.
Team spirit means the world
At a first glance, Denmark should have taken a step back after the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, with all-time greats Mikkel Hansen and Niklas Landin retiring. But Nikolaj Jacobsen and his staff were prepared for anything and everything. And they delivered some fantastic team balance with the selection, ensuring that the chemistry is not very much affected.
For the plethora of talk about individuals – we will also get there in a few moments – the team is king in Denmark. Take, for instance, Kevin Møller, who started as Emil Nielsen’s understudy in the team, but was allowed to leave the squad to care for his wife and his newborn child. In came Jannick Green, who deputised for Møller when needed.
Both Møller and back Jacob Holm were mentioned by their teammates after the 32:26 win in the final against Croatia, with custom-made golden shirts brought to the podium by their teammates, who also celebrated for them, underlining the small contribution every player had in this unprecedented fourth win.
Gidsel cements status as top player in the world
But as much as team spirit is important, individual performances also matter. And none was more special than Mathias Gidsel’s at Croatia/Denmark/Norway 2025. The right back catapulted to life at Egypt 2021 and, from that moment on, was unstoppable. He was the MVP at Poland/Sweden 2023 and at both edition of the Olympic Games he played in – Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024.
And, of course, he did it again at Croatia/Denmark/Norway 2025, taking the MVP title and the top goal scorer title in emphatic fashion. The right back, the 2023 IHF Male Player of the Year, is unstoppable. He scored 74 goals and only one came from a penalty. He also is the fifth best scorer in a single edition of the world handball flagship competition, with the record still being held by Kiril Lazarov, who had 92 goals in 2009.
Gidsel is a transcendental talent, who is almost impossible to stop when he gets into gear. And if he does not score, he delivers an assist. He topped that char too, with 45 assists, four more than Chile’s Rodrigo Salinas. All while he scored 10 goals in the final and finished with a 69% shooting efficiency, being a machine on fast breaks, where he scored 15 goals, also the largest number at Croatia/Denmark/Norway 2025.
Nielsen was impossible to beat
If Gidsel was the top of the crop in the attack, Denmark also had by far the best goalkeeper in the competition. Emil Nielsen, who will turn 28 years old in March, had a World Championship to remember, on his way to being named in the All-Star team. Nielsen had 125 saves over the nine matches he played, for an otherworldly 43% saving efficiency.
He saved at a fantastic rate of 38% in eight of the nine matches he played in. He had at least 45% saving efficiency in five of the nine matches played, with a 52% saving efficiency against Czechia in the final match of the preliminary round. Only once, against Germany, he posted a 18% saving efficiency, playing only 22 minutes, before being replaced.
These are mind-blowing numbers for a goalkeeper, who is arguably currently the best in the world. And it is not about just making saves, it is about making key saves, with 16 one-on-one saves from 6 metres, 13 saves on the wing and other 16 saves in breakthroughs, again one-on-one with the attacked. Basically, in all these situations, Nielsen saved one in three shots. That speaks volumes of how important Denmark’s goalkeeper was in the grand scheme of things.
Fantastic attack, great defence
Before Denmark came, no team has put together an unbeaten streak larger than 18 matches, with France and Sweden holding the record. Now, the Scandinavian side has put together a 37-match unbeaten streak at the IHF Men’s World Championship, winning 35 of them and drawing two – the quarter-final against Egypt at Egypt 2021 and the main round match against Croatia at Poland/Sweden 2023.
This edition of the competition has been even better for Denmark, as they posted a record number of goals scored in a single edition – 330 – 13 more than the previous one, set at Denmark/Germany 2019, when they scored 317 goals. The difference? Well, for starters, at that World Championship, Denmark played 10 matches to seal the title. Here, there were only nine matches, averaging 36.6 goals per match, a fantastic performance.
While the defence was also excellent, fueling Denmark’s fast breaks, the attack carried the lost for most of the time, as Denmark scored 40 goals in the semi-final against Portugal, in the win against Germany in the main round, as well as 47 goals in the opener against Algeria.