Crunch time in Men's EHF EURO 2026 Qualifiers
With only two rounds remaining in the Men's EHF EURO 2026 Qualifiers, the race for a place at the final tournament has reached the critical point. Following seven games to open the round on Wednesday, round 5 of the qualifiers will conclude with nine matches on Thursday.
We are trying to reduce the time for decision-making and make as few technical mistakes as possible. Although this is of course easy to say in theory, we will try to take away easy fast-attack goals from them.
We have two very important games ahead against Slovakia and Finland. Both teams have shown quality against us, so we need to approach these games with great caution. That game against Finland is very important for us — we must win it in order to secure second place in our group.
This is a very important game, not only to take revenge for the narrow loss in the previous match, but also to qualify for the EHF EURO for the second straight time. We know Greece are a strong team, but this is our chance to prove that our ambitions are real. The whole team is ready to give everything – these two games are decisive for our group and we are ready to fight.
Spain is a very strong team — we are very aware. They come from a bronze at the Olympic Games and even if they are partly facing a generational change, almost all their players play the Champions League every week. It will be a very tough match. We are all very excited to play against them and we want to write another piece of history for this sport in Italy.
It will be difficult. We will try to get our points. We will fight to the end. No one will ever give up. But this is a good team, a very good team — everyone there plays at a very high level.
It's a very important week for us given the standings in the pool. We have seen in the previous games against Ukraine and Kosovo how difficult it is to play against them and I expect two difficult games again, but we have a clear goal and that is to qualify for the European championship.
This team, this country — we’ve come too far to stop now. The EURO is within reach, and we’ll fight for every inch.
I’m sure we can beat Israel if we play well. We have to be focused on this first match 100 per cent and there is no sense talking about future matches now.
We have to focus on ourselves. We have a young team that really wants to show their quality and they have a lot of confidence. We have to do things well, with the energy we're used to in the national team. It could be a game with a lot of anxiety, because we're dealing with less experienced players, and some mistakes could happen because of that. But we're a good group, we're getting on well. The future is bright.
