Semi-finals to be drawn, new trophy to be presented

Two days after the completion of the Men's EHF Cup Quarter-finals the draw event of the EHF Cup Finals will take place at 11:00 hrs local time in the in Nantes, France as the four remaining teams in the competition will learn names of their semi-final opponents.

The tournament's hosts HBC Nantes, their domestic French rivals Chambery Savoie Handball, German team Frisch Auf Göppingen and Spain’s Fraikin BM Granollers made it to the season's ending tournament.

The draw, which will take place in the Salle Sportive de la Trocardiere, the 2016 EHF Cup Finals venue, will be preceded by the official press conference.

New trophy to be unveiled

Jean Brihault, the EHF President and Gael Pelletier, the HBC Nantes president will also sign the official contract for the final tournament and also the brand new winners’ trophy will be presented during the event.

It has been designed by a local artist, Jean Noël Scerri. The specialist in sculpturing wood and steel also designed the first trophy for the Men’s EHF Cup Finals in 2013.

“It was an honour to design and make the first trophy for the Men’s EHF Cup Finals. My main inspiration this year was to start by using my previous work in 2013 and to evolve it into something more modern. It was a very exciting challenge,” he said.

“The 2016 trophy maintains the tradition of the previous design, by respecting the golden ratio but with a much more modern design. The idea of an arm with a ball is being used again but this year I wanted to show both the attack move and the power of the shot. If you look very carefully you can see the ball at the top of a triangle. Using very simple forms, I wanted to show the idea of victory,” Scerri added.

The 2016 trophy is 63 cm tall and weighs 5 kilograms. It has been made of steel with a wooden stand, which has been designed with help of Tristan Jaoul, a member of the Racine Carbone group. It required 20 hours of searching and working on draws and preparation and almost 40 hours of manufacturing.

Where to follow

The EHF will provide the live streaming of the event including post-draw reactions of the club representatives on the EHF Facebook page.
Fans will also be able to follow the live ticker on eurohandball.com and via live tweets on the official @ehf channel.

Open draw

All four teams will be drawn from the same pot. The EHF Cup Finals draw will be completely open, what means that there is no seeding and two teams from the same country or two teams who already played together in the group phase can face each other.

Both semi-final games will be played on Saturday 14 May, followed by the 3/4 placement match and the final on Sunday 15 May. The playing times are 14:45 and 17:30 on both days, but the exact playing order will be only announced following negotiations with TV partners.