The clash for seventh place at the 2019 IHF Men’s Youth World Championship will see two of the top five sides at the M18 EHF EURO last year battle it out in the early morning game tomorrow (Sunday 18 August) at the Boris Trajkovski Arena in Skopje, North Macedonia.

PLACEMENT MATCH 7/8
Iceland vs Spain, 10:30 local time
Boris Trajkovski Arena, Skopje

Both sides suffered near-familiar results in the first round of matches in the Placement Round 5-8 earlier today, with Iceland losing 30:24 to France and Spain 29:24 to Hungary.

Iceland could only name 14 players for their France match-up and will be hoping that at least one of their three players who sat out this morning – Stiven Tobar Valencia, Haukur Prastarson and Sigardur Dan Oskarsson – can make a return to fitness and give their side a boost. 

The leading scorer for Iceland, Dagur Gautason, is 10 goals (39) off of the 49 goals which Martin Serafimov and Mohamed Mohamed have to top the tournament goalscoring table for North Macedonia and Bahrain respectively, so he will have a personal impetus to do well in the game.

Spain will have history as their motivation, as a win will ensure they only equal their worst-ever ranking in the competition (7th in 2007), but a loss would be their lowest-ever.

When they met last year in Croatia at the U18 European championship, Spain won by six (33:27), having led by five at the break (18:13).