Can anyone beat Germany? They are now through to their third, consecutive major championship final after defeating the USA in the semi-finals of The World Games on Wednesday in Birmingham, USA.

Joining them there will be Norway, who defeated The World Games 2017 silver medallists Argentina.

Germany have now won their 24th major championship game in a row – nine each at the 2021 EHF European Championship and 2022 IHF World Championship plus six at The World Games so far.

“That sounds perfect,” said Germany coach Alexander Novakovic to ihf.info when this form was put to him. 

“We are very proud of our performance so far, but we had to improve a little bit because of an injury. The girls played nearly a perfect match against USA and I think the victory was well-deserved.”

That victory came thanks to a 2-0 (21:10, 20:12) victory with 202 IHF Women’s Beach Handball World Championship All-star Team member Amelie Mollmann top-scoring with 13 points.

Despite going ahead in both periods early on, The World Games debutants and host nation USA could not keep up with the Germans.

“Germany is a great team, they showed up,” said US goalkeeper Staci Self to ihf.info about the team they had faced 24 hours earlier in the preliminary group.

“We discussed adjustments from Wednesday and we needed each player to have their best game to beat the reigning world champs. Unfortunately weren’t able to do it, it wasn’t our best showing 

“Immediately after the game we discussed being goldfish and forgetting this game and facing our attention on tomorrow,” added Self about the bronze medal match against Argentina. “Tomorrow starts right now.”

Argentina were unable to get closer to Norway after the two had met in the preliminary round and the Europeans had taken a shoot-out victory.

The Norwegians won 2-0 (22:16, 18:16) with Marielle Martinsen’s 19 points coming at decisive, crucial moments in the game. 

The second period was tight all the way through and went to a golden goal after it ended 16:16. Martinsen secured a medal with a six-metre penalty after Argentina’s Luciana Scordamaglia had been shown a red card. 

Martinsen had also scored the last three goals to secure the first period.