Ranking for EYOF 2013 released

The European Handball Federation has released the rankings for the handball competition at the 2013 European Youth Olympic Summer Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands.

For girls' teams (players born in 1996 and 1997) the rankings are based on the results of 2012 Women's 18 European Open in Sweden and the 2011 Women's 17 European Championship in Czech Republic.

The rankings for girls' teams are as follows:

1. Norway
2. Russia
3. Czech Republic
4. Germany
5. Sweden
6. Denmark
7. Hungary

The substitutes are France, Romania and Croatia.

For boys' teams (players born in 1996 and 1997) the rankings are based on the 2012 Men's 18 European Championship in Austria.

The rankings for boys' teams are as follows:

1. Germany
2. Sweden
3. Denmark
4. Spain
5. Slovenia
6. Austria
7. Croatia

The substitutes are Belarus, Norway and Serbia.

The national team for both boys and girls representing Netherlands are automatically qualified as organiser.

For both the boys' and the girls' competition there will be two groups with four teams each.

Cross-matches in the semi-finals, the group's respective first ranked team face the other group's second ranked team, will decide the two finalists.

The handball tournament also serves as the qualification event for the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China.

The European Youth Olympic Summer Festival will take place from 14 to 19 July. 3300 young athletes between 13 and 18 years of age from 49 European countries are expected to participate.

They will compete in nine different sports. Apart from handball these sports are athletics, basketball, swimming, judo, tennis, gymnastics, cycling and volleyball.