Iceland defeat the previously-unbeaten Danes to finally confirm their last 16 spot in the fourth round of games in preliminary group D of the 2019 IHF Men’s Junior World Championship in Spain.

GROUP D
Iceland vs Denmark 25:22 (13:9)

At half-time in this encounter, the Danish goalkeeper pairing of Salah Boutaf and Christoffer Bonde had a total of one save between them from 14 shots faced and this told the story of the Denmark defence.

Iceland were well on their way to finally confirming their eighth-finals spot thanks to Bjarni Ofeigur Valdimarsson’s five goals and six saves from 13 shots by the eventual best player of the match, Iceland’s goalkeeper Viktor Gisil Hallgrimsson (13 saves in total).

Despite the porous wall, Denmark did keep in touch with just a four-goal difference (13:9) at the break, helped by four two-minute suspensions from the Icelanders.

But the Danes had only led once in the entire half, and that was with four minutes on the clock, and the second period was not much different, even if Darri Aronsson was shown red after his third two-minute suspension just over 10 minutes before the end.

And if it was needed to illustrate the Danish lack of luck in front of the Icelandic goalkeepers, second-choice goalkeeper Andri Scheving came off the bench for the resulting seven metre shot from Aronsson’s foul and promptly pushed Nikolai Vinther’s shot onto the post to end the game with one save from one shot and a court time of 27 seconds.

“We played with great team spirit and we have shown what we can do when we face any team,” said Hallgrimsson after the victory as his side can look forward to a rest day before facing Germany in their final group game on Monday in what could be a group decider.

Best Player of the Match: Viktor Gisil Hallgrimsson (ISL)