
Big win against USA sees Norway through to main round
January 17, 2025
Player replacements: 2025 IHF Men’s World Championship
January 18, 2025Croatia made it two wins out of two in front of a packed Arena Zagreb to secure their main round spot and send home 15,000 fans happy.
Argentina now turn their attention to their winner-takes-all main round qualification clash against Bahrain on Sunday, while Croatia will face Egypt for the top spot and those all-important points to take into the main round.
GROUP H
Croatia vs Argentina 33:18 (18:7)
Argentina came to the Arena Zagreb for their second preliminary group match knowing they would be entering the house of their hosts at this IHF Men’s World Championship – a house of 15,000 loud and cheering people.
Pre-match, the DJ inside the arena played a string instrumental version of Coldplay’s ‘A Sky Full of Stars’ which prompted those packed inside to turn their mobile phone lights on.
It was a moment to remember for all of those inside, including Argentina coach Rodolfo Jung and his staff, who took it all in while waiting for the team introductions.
If the magnitude of their task had not been clear before, then this highlighted it in full light. Anyone connected to Argentina, not least Jung, knew that it was an almost impossible mission for his side, who are in transition and missing their legendary playing Simonet brothers and once the national anthems had finished, the stars had come from the sky and onto court for Croatia.
The galaxy of Croatian talent was led by captain Domagoj Duvnjak, with coach Dagur Sigurdsson making one change from their Bahrain win as 2,04m line player Veron Nacinovic came in for Josip Simic.
After taking the lead early on (1:0, 2:1, 4:3) Argentina eventually went behind in the ninth minute (5:4), but not after Duvnjak had left the court in some pain, appearing to step on a defender’s foot and hobble off after eight minutes.
Duvnjak did not return to the court, or even the bench for the rest of the match but his side did not let this affect them and despite a scrappy period which saw five turnovers in a row from the two sides, the Europeans extended their lead to four (8:4) in the 14th minute, prompting a first Argentina time out.
But this did not stem the tide as 8:4 became 12:6 in the 19th minute and Jung swapped out Leonel Maciel in goal for Santiago Giovanola, who would go on to play his part, making 10 saves in total.
His side were only able to score one more goal before the half as the hosts stretched their lead to 11 (18:7) after a beautiful passage of play which highlighted Croatia’s strength. First, an Argentina shot was blocked by two defenders. The ball then fell to Nacinovic, who passed to the rushing forward Filip Glavas while pointing to push the ball through to the overlapping Luka Cindric. Glavas did, but then got it straight back for a delightful one-two and Glavas duly sunk home as both players embraced the subsequent crowd reaction.
The crowd played their part too, a highlight being in a Mexican wave just before the break with everyone connected to the team thinking that it would be a second half to really pile on the misery for their opponents.
But Argentina did not let the game get away from them and more than held their own, going down just 15:11 in the second period and continued to be denied again by goalkeeper Dominik Kuzmanovic, who was named the best player of the match for the second time running, stopping 13 of the 26 shots he faced.
hummel Player of the Match: Dominik Kuzmanovic (Croatia)