Sweden has made it to the semi-finals of the Men’s Junior World Championship in Bosnia-Herzegovina. But the team of coach Jan Karlsson had to break the highly strong resistance of the Netherlands in the quarter-final on Wednesday (24 July) to finally take a 30:25 victory after being below by 10:13 at the break. The Swedish team now will face France in their semi on Friday (26 July).

Backed by the high level performance of goalkeeper Bart Ravensbergen, the Netherlands were in lead all over the first half. His saves and the goals of left back Dario Polman surprised the Swedish team which had not lost one single point until the quarter-final. The Dutch team overran the Swedish team by a 4:0 opening series, and it took more than eight minutes, before the “tre kronor” hit the net for the first time.

And Sweden could even be happy not to be down by more goals, as also their goalkeeper Peter Johannesson saved brilliantly. Netherlands waited patiently in attack and built-up their defence like concrete. But by improving in defence, Sweden equalized at 4:4 and 7:7, before another Dutch 3:0 series opened the gate to the 13:10 halftime lead.

Sweden rose like Phoenix in the second half, while Netherlands lost their rhythm in attack. It took only five minutes when the match had been leveled again at 15:15 and four minutes more, before Sweden took the lead for the first time at 18:17 after punishing Dutch mistakes by counter-attack goals. Shortly later, a double strike of Josef Pujol granted the first two goal lead at 20:18.

But the Netherlands fought back, still boosted by the saves of Ravensbergen and the goals of Jovis Baart – but despite some equal intermediate results they did not mange to turn the match, in contrast: Sweden forged ahead to 25:22, causing a Dutch time-out in minute 50. And after missing three more straight chances against Johannesson and conceding two more goals to 22:27 the Dutch dream of the semi-finals was over – and the distance remained the same until the final buzzer. The Swedish team finally had the greater will to win and caused a clearly lower of mistakes in the crucial stage.  Best Swedish scorers were Berg, Freiman and Stenmalm with five goals each.