Lithuania and Romania secure last tickets

Lithuania and Romania will continue in the race for the World Championship 2021 in Egypt. Both won their respective tournaments in qualification stage 1.

Now, all four participants from this stage are confirmed after Turkey and Israel secured their tickets earlier.

This quartet will be in the pots for the draw of the intermediate stage of the qualification, which will be staged in April in play-offs with those European teams from the EHF EURO 2020, which are not part of the Olympic Qualification tournaments at the same time.

The winners of those matches and the remaining teams will face each other in 10 play-offs in June for the spots at the World Championship.

While Lithuania had to shiver until the end of the very last match of the tournament in Luxembourg against Slovakia, Romania had already qualified as winner before day 3 of the tournament in Italy had started.

Montpellier star Jonas Truchanovicius and Aidenas Malaskinskas scored eight goals each and secured the Lithuanians a highly thrilling 25:24 win against Slovakia after a 11:12 deficit at half-time. Scoring four straight goals after the break was the key for the success.

Both sides had won their respective matches against hosts Luxembourg and the Faroe Islands. This final result means that the EHF EURO 2022 co-host Slovakia will miss the World Championship 2021 after they had already failed on their way to the EHF EURO 2020.

“We are so disappointed. We lacked some power and did not have enough luck to win,” said Slovak coach Petr Kukucka for TASR agency.

Romania won their first two matches against Georgia (29:24) and Kosovo (32:21) at the tournament in Italy in a dominant way – and as the hosts were defeated by Georgia 25:28 and only tied with Kosovo, the winner was already confirmed after match day 2. Finally Kosovo took the third position by beating Georgia.

Find all results of this round here.