Group E: Austria and Norway look for wins
16 Jan. 2021
Already after the first matchday things have become clear: a win for Switzerland and France in their second games will see them through to the main round, but both Austria and Norway, defeated in their opening matches, will be fighting hard to potentially finish the day with two points and leave Group E completely balanced.
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Austria vs France 19:00 CAT
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Austria coach Ales Pajovic bemoaned the bad luck he and his coaching staff suffered after all their pre-match preparation for their original first round opponents, the United States of America, was thrown out of the window, with Switzerland replacing the North American side the day before Egypt 2021, arriving on the day of their opening match and then promptly handing Austria a defeat, putting them on the edge of the President’s Cup.
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But they can have no excuses against France, with their opponents set since the draw in September.
“It’s not over,” said Pajovic after the defeat on Thursday. “We have two more games and then we will see what will happen. We will try something, but it will be hard to get points against these two teams (France and Norway). Our goal was to win the first game and go to the next round so now we have to stay together until the end.”
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France on the other hand can seal their main round spot with a win after goalkeeper Wesley Pardin turned on the style against Norway to seal at 28:24 win which, for some, was a shock after the French had underperformed in their recent European Championship qualifiers against Serbia.
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“We couldn’t expect to play that good because we didn’t play that good against Serbia before,” said French player Kentin Mahe who scored four in the opening minutes against Norway.
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France have beaten Austria 31 times in 37 meetings since 1956, with their last victory coming in Croatia at the 2018 Men’s EHF EURO, 33:26.
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Switzerland vs Norway 21:30 CAT
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“We were just thinking about reaching this game, I haven’t even thought about France or Norway,” said Switzerland’s leader Andy Schmid to ihf.info when asked about their remaining group games of Egypt 2021.
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With one foot in the main round already, Switzerland have hope against the 2017 and 2019 World Championship silver medallists Norway after France took them apart in their opening clash on Thursday.
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For Norway coach Christian Berge, he expects more for his team as they look to put that disappointment behind them.
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“We had difficulties almost during the whole game, we had to fight a lot for our goals against France,” he said to ihf.info. “We can do better, and I hope to achieve better [against Switzerland]. In attack  I would like to see more flow in offence, as went very much one-against-one France. Our defence was pretty good until the 18/19th minute of the second half.”
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Berge will be looking for his team to share the scoring as superstar Sander Sagosen scored 10 times against the French, nearly half their team goals.
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“We are looking forward to the match against Switzerland and I'm really looking forward to getting on court again,” said Norway goalkeeper Torbjørn Bergerud. “We will show ourselves again and leave the hall with a victory.”
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Norway and Switzerland have met 38 times with 19 wins in favour of the Swiss, and 16 for Norway. Most recently, the teams met in the qualifiers for the 2019 IHF Men’s World Championship in June 2018 with both teams winning at home – Switzerland in Zug, 33:30 and Norway in Stavanger, 32:26.