02.11.2018, 09:46
EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup has thrown off in Catania

REVIEW: The defending champions underline their status as favourites as the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup 2018 gets underway on the island of Sicily

EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup has thrown off in Catania

Reigning men’s Champions Cup winners, “Ekaterinodar” Krasnodar from Russia, as well as their women’s counterpart, C. BM Playa Algeciras from Spain, have confirmed their ambitions to win back-back titles in Catania.

On day 1 of the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup, Krasnodar won their first preliminary round match, beating BHC 1898 from Switzerland in confident fashion, 2:0 (20:13, 19:10).

They face Göteborg Beach Handball Club from Sweden and Melita Falcons from Malta on Friday when the preliminary round comes to an end. The first two teams of each of the four groups in the preliminary round qualify for the quarter-finals.

Matches start at 10:00. All the action from courts 1 and 2 is streamed live on ehfTV.

Algericas have already secured a spot in the women’s quarter-finals, after they beat Aker Topphandball from Norway 2:1 (15:10, 8:13, 10:6) and local side Team Italia 2:0 (14:13, 14:7).

Quarter-finals and semi-finals are played on Saturday, 3 November; the finals take place on Sunday.

32 men’s and women’s teams from 17 countries have arrived in Catania, Sicily for the largest edition in the history of the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup.

Since 2014, the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup gathers Europe's national beach handball champions and also marks the close to the European beach handball season. 16 men's and 16 women's teams have made their way to the Italian island.

Follow live and on social media

Over the four days of the tournament, the EHF offers beach handball fans plenty of opportunities to follow the event.

All matches of Court 1 and Court 2 will be streamed live on ehfTV.

There will be TV coverage in Denmark and Norway on Viaplay, Germany on Sportdeutschland.de and Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia on Sport1.

This coverage will be supplemented by a number of highlight and best of-clips from the event which will also be available on YouTube as well as on the EHF Beach Handball Facebook page.

All matches can be followed with the dedicated beach handball ticker and the respective statistics are available for all men's and women's teams on the respective event pages.

Furthermore there will be continuous updates via Instagram stories on the EHF Beach Handball account.

TEXT: EHF / ts