Men’s EHF EURO 2020: 200 days to go – ‘Boarding completed’

For the first time in Men’s EHF EURO history, the event will see 24 teams competing across 18 days in Sweden, Austria and Norway. The preliminary round will be held in Graz, Vienna, Trondheim, Malmö and Gothenburg; main round venues are Vienna and Malmö and the final weekend is taking place in Stockholm.

With the countdown reaching the 200-days-to-go mark on Sunday and all 24 teams confirmed, ticket sales are in full swing across all venues. In total, more than 200,000 tickets have already been sold.

In Sweden there are day tickets available for all stages of the tournament, preliminary and main round as well as the final weekend. In Austria, fans can buy day tickets for the matches in Graz and Vienna as well as tickets for the entire preliminary and main round.

For the Norwegian host city, Trondheim, entire preliminary round tickets are available for group C and two-day tickets for both groups, C and D. Depending on availability, day tickets will also be available from autumn onwards.

Tickets can be purchased at www.ehf-euro.com.

Who plays where?

In line with the regulations, which allow the organisers to place one team per group in advance, six teams have already been seeded:

•    Group A | Graz: Croatia
•    Group B | Vienna: Austria
•    Group C | Trondheim: Germany
•    Group D | Trondheim: Norway
•    Group E | Malmö: Denmark
•    Group F | Gothenburg: Sweden

The remaining 18 teams have been seeded to the draw pots as follows based on their performance at the EHF EURO 2020 Qualifiers and the EHF EURO 2018:

POT 1: Spain, Sweden, France, Denmark, Croatia, Czech Republic
(defending champions, organiser SWE, 4 first ranked teams of qualifiers)
POT 2: Norway, Slovenia, Germany, North Macedonia, Hungary, Belarus
(organiser NOR, 4 remaining first ranked teams of qualifiers, 1 second ranked team of qualifiers)
POT 3: Austria, Iceland, Montenegro, Portugal, Switzerland, Latvia
(organiser AUT, 5 second ranked teams of qualifiers)
POT 4: Poland, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Netherlands
(2 second ranked teams of qualifiers, 4 best third-ranked teams of qualifiers)

Will we see Zlatan Ibrahimovic at a handball match?

Having a look at the pots and the already allocated teams, some juicy encounters are possible. Group A in Graz could potentially become an ‘all-Balkan’ group, featuring besides Croatia either Slovenia or North Macedonia from pot 2, Montenegro from pot 3 as well as Serbia or Bosnia-Herzegovina from pot 4.

Swiss fans would certainly be delighted if their teams gets drawn to group 1 in Graz, as that would result in a reasonably short travel to Switzerland’s first EHF EURO matches since 2006. The same would obviously hold true for Slovenia, whose fans would just need to ‘jump’ across the border to reach matches in Vienna and Graz.

At the same time there is an almost 50 per cent chance that Bosnia-Herzegovina gets drawn to a group Sweden – wouldn’t that be a great opportunity for Zlatan Ibrahimovic to visit a handball match? The football superstar was born in Sweden to a Bosnian father and a Croatian mother.

Draw in Vienna on 28 June

The Austrian capital will host the final tournament draw on 28 June starting at 18:45 at Erste Bank Campus (Am Belvedere 1, 1100 Vienna).

The draw will be streamed live on the EHF EURO Youtube channel and the EHF EURO Facebook page with live tweets on Twitter and behind-the-scenes content on Instagram.

The draw will also feature handball stars from the three organisers as well as from the defending champions Spain: Philip Henningsson (SWE), Robert Weber (AUT), Torbjorn Bergerud (NOR) and Daniel Dujshebaev (ESP) will assist with the draw.