“After we lost against Norway, I knew that we could be eliminated if we do not win this match,” said Nikola Karabatic after France mounted a spirited comeback in the second half of the hosts’ last match of the preliminary round in the men’s handball competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

France exiting Paris 2024 not only would have sent shockwaves through the competition, as the reigning champions would have been out with a single win in five matches, but it would have also marked the finish of a star-studded career, with Karabatic announcing his retirement after the end of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

After 361 matches in the France national team and exactly 1300 goals scored for “Les Bleus”, Karabatic’s career could have ended in an unexpected elimination, something that even the most pessimist France fans could not have thought about once they saw the group for this edition of the Olympics.

Did that thought cross Karabatic’s mind, or for him it was just business as usual, a must-win match, to add yet another medal to his already fantastic collection?

“Of course, you know the option is there, and even if I believe in destiny and I knew we were going to win, well, the thought of a loss came to my mind. I told myself, well, this could be the last one. But it is what it is, this is how handball is,” adds Karabatic.

After being a starter in the opener against Denmark in the South Paris Arena 6, Karabatic has slowly been reduced to the bench, as the left back position is now usually occupied by Elohim Prandi, who has also been France’s top scorer against Hungary, with seven goals. That’s more than Karabatic has scored in the entire competition at Paris 2024, with France’s fourth most capped player scoring six until now.

But Karabatic’s influence is huge for the team. He is not the captain, but he is the player who probably inspired plenty of the current players in the team to take up handball. He also knows what it means to win, as well as he knows what it means to lose. Therefore, it is surprising to see how much it meant for Karabatic that France qualified in the quarter-finals.

“I have never been so happy to qualify for the quarter-finals in an Olympic competition. I am 40 years old, but I feel new things even right now, when I am close to the end of my career. It is an amazing feeling and I am very proud of my teammates, of us as a team. We did very good in difficult conditions, after we lost the first two matches,” adds Karabatic.

The left back has been in France’s squad in 26 of the last 27 major international competitions, missing out only at the 2021 IHF Men’s World Championship, when he was injured. He won 17 medals, including the gold three times at the Olympic Games, and four times at the EHF EURO and the World Championship.

He is also the player with the largest number of matches in the Olympics – 44 – and the only one to have featured in six editions, starting from Athens 2024, with a career spanning through three different decades. And the idea was to finish off on a high, with another Olympic title, to add yet another medal to his collection.

However, with 16 minutes left in the match against Hungary, where France needed to avoid a loss to progress to the quarter-finals, the hosts were down two goals and had scored only twice in the first 14 minutes of the second half. Basically, they were facing elimination, being on the brink of disaster.

But then, they showed the required spirit and the desire to seal the win, finishing the match with an 8:2 run, which prompted a 24:20 win. However, Karabatic did play only eight minutes and 25 seconds, missing both the shots he attempted in the match. Was it an injury or a coach decision?

“It is something we agreed with Elohim. I explained to him that I didn't care whether he started the matches or not, and that if he needed to start to feel better, there was no problem rotating. That’s also the strength of the collective, of the team. It's a decision of the coach,” says Karabatic.

In two days’ time, Karabatic will face the prospect of the last match in his career once again. This time, it is against Germany, the country where he really got his career rolling, having spent four seasons at THW Kiel, between 2005 and 2009, winning one of the three EHF Champions League Men titles in his career.

Win the match and then his career has two more matches, the semi-final and one medal game, in the Stade Pierre Mauroy in Lille, with over 27.000 spectators ready to cheer for him. And that is motivation enough for Karabatic to really try everything to have three matches instead of one left in his career.

“Even we were not happy with how we played and the fans continued to send energy, to cheer for us, to push us from behind. The atmosphere in Paris, in the Expo, was amazing and we will remember it,” concluded Karabatic.