Voiceless Trefilow - Preview Russia vs. France 

Defending champion Russia is hit hard before their quarter-final against France, played Wednesday 11:45 (local time) in Sao Paulo: Before the re-match of the 2009 World Championship’s final (won by Russia) their coach Jewgeny Trefilow has lost his voice. Trefilow – known for his motivational shouts all the time during the match – could not attend the official IHF quarter-final press conference. “We apologize, but he will be here tomorrow,” the Russian Benjamin Kuznetsov said. “We need him urgently, as he is the biggest expert of Russian women’s handball, so we have to do all that’s possible, that Trefilow will be on the bench in this crucial match,” added assistant coach Alexej Soloview.

As the defending champion has to miss their coach, France has to replace top player Mariama Signate due to a broken eye bone, an injury occurred in the training session two days ago. ”This hits us really hard,” coach Olivier Krumbholz said, “as she is a key for our attack as well as our defence.” Not only because of this injury for Krumbholz Russia is the favourite in the match and also the favourite of the World Championship. “They have an excellent team with extra-ordinary players, this will be an absolutely tough task for us.”

The first quarter-final is something like a final – as all World Championship titles since 2001 meet in one game: Russia has won Gold in 2001, 2005, 2007 and 2009, France took the title in 2003. Two years ago France was chanceless in the final of Nanjing.

But both teams have already reached their first objective – qualifying at least for the Olympic Qualification Tournaments in May 2012. “This was our first task,” Soloview said, adding: “And now we want to proceed to the semi-final and go for a medal.”

By looking upon the changes since the last clash in Nanjing, Krumbholz mentioned that “we made a lot of progress in the last two years, especially our young players”. For Soloview things did not change that much, “as we had our major changes after the Olympics in Beijing. But I believe that our current team is better than our team in 2009.”

Russia have won all their six matches in Brazil up to now, including a quite easy victory against Iceland in the eight-finals. France had harder work by beating Sweden in the eight-finals after ranking second in their group due to the defeat against Brazil.  

Time for revenge? – preview of Denmark vs. Angola

It was an Angolan 28:23 main round victory in Yangzhou, China, which was the reason for missing the semi-final at the World Championship 2009 for Denmark. “Maybe it is pay back time now,” Danish coach Jan Pytlick hopes previously to the quarter-finals against the African Champion (14.30 local time) in Sao Paulo. “We are really looking forward to this match, but Angola played a great tournament,” Pytlick added. His team was the lucky extra time winner over Japan in the eight finals, as Angola surprised Korea with a one-goal margin in the round of the last 16 teams.

“Denmark is the clear favourite,” Angolan coach Francisco Eduardo said, but at the same time he hopes: “We played good, and we will give all to win this match.” The currently best Angolan result was rank seven at the World Championship 2007 in France after beating nations like France and Hungary. Now the African Champion hopes for the huge sensation. “We know the decisive big points of Denmark, and we try to stop exactly those points in our match play,” Eduardo said: “We learnt a lot.”

Angola surprisingly reached the second rank in the “group of death” below Norway but ahead of nations like Montenegro, Germany and Iceland. Denmark won their group ahead of Croatia and Sweden despite having a completely different team compared with the European Championship 2010: “Eight players of our 2010 squad are not in Brazil, our line-up changed totally,” Pytlick explained: “But we are not the favourite for the World Championship title, as we have so many young players – and we have to see how they cope with this situation.”

Denmark – three times Olympic Champion 1996, 2000 and 2004 – has won their last Gold medal at World Championships in 1997 in Germany. “It’s long ago and we are still building a new team for the Olympics 2012,” Pytlick said. As the Danish team ranked fourth at the last European Championship, Angola became African Champion.