They have made their way through seven rounds of games to find themselves in the well-earned position of Semi-Finalists at the 2015 IHF Men’s Youth World Championship, but by the final whistle on Wednesday the 19th of August, the four top teams in the competition will be reduced to two. 

Iceland vs Slovenia 15:30 local time

As top scorer of the competition, Iceland right wing Oeinn Rikhardsson, said after their 32:27 Quarter-Final win against Brazil, what will happen in the 60 minutes these sides are on court tomorrow night is an unknown:

“We don’t know very much about Slovenia – we’ve never played them before, but we will just prepare for what will be next.”

Both like a quick game, with Iceland favouring fast breaks by wings Rikhardsson and Hakon Styrmission, and structured set play, while Slovenia work with pace up the court from the whole team and a clever mix of old and new tactics in positional play. Two strong goalkeepers will stand between the posts, though Slovenia have the upper hand there as Urh Kastelic is second ranked at Russia 2015 with 75 saves at 33.6%. Gretar Gudjonsson is on a cumulative 32.3% courtesy of 62 saves.  

It can therefore be expected to be a high-scoring game with Rikhardsson and Slovenia right back Blaz Janc likely to stand out in that respect. Rikhardsson so far has a tally of 56 goals at 72% accuracy, and Janc is right behind him in second position on the top scorers rank with 53 goals and 68.8% efficiency. 

Iceland have been experimenting a little with the seven-on-six tactic, trying it in several matches and conceding a few goals each time. This kind of tactic will be dangerous against a team like Slovenia – where Brazil failed to notice the empty goal on one occasion, the Balkan team will certainly find the goal before Iceland can react if they are not careful. 

France vs Spain 18:00 local time

France and Spain both won their quarter-finals with some ease - the French against Sweden 35:28 and the Spanish against Denmark 23:18 - complete with an outstanding solo goalkeeping effort from Xoan Ledo - but those memories will be long gone, replaced by those from slightly longer ago.

One year ago, nearly to the day, at the semi-finals of the European Championship 18 in Poland, France defeated Spain 24:23 as they went on to win the title with many of the players lining up later today who did 12 months ago.

One player who will not be lining up again is Dylan Garain - who scored three in that game - but he picked up an injury earlier on at Russia 2015 and was replaced.

His birthday - 22nd August - comes just a few days after a potential final and his French side led by the influential Melyvn Richardson is doing all they can to bring home the silverware.

“It’s very difficult for us because Dylan is a very good player for the team,” said Richardson. “We want to win for Dylan as we are very close.

“Everybody is at a high level which is our strength. We play very fast and when we are very good with the score we still don’t let up.

“We were very happy when we beat Sweden because we played for the whole 60 minutes, it was a good story but the story is not finished yet.

“We have the semi-final and, hopefully the final and we want to win the medal.  We have a lot of good players in the team. For example me, I play, and when I am tired I change with MD (Dika Mem) and he is a very good player too. 

“It’s our objective to win here, we see our U21s winning the World Championship, the U17 wining the European Olympic Games and, of course, our ‘A’ team winning too.

“They are our example - we have to win we have to go to first place; we are a very good nation of handball and with all the fans here for us in Russia, who don’t stop clapping or cheering for us, they are the eighth player of the team.

“They are families’ of players for us so it is very important for them to be here.”

Spain coach Alberto Suarez Menendez was quick to note that his semi-final opponents present him with an opportunity to try again to stop the French handball machine but also recognised that Spain themselves can cause problems.

“They are a very, very good team” he said. “They are the European Champions but when we played them last summer we only lost by one goal.

“It was a beautiful match so let’s see what happens against them; we are going to try and play a better match than that one.

“Francisco Castro is our captain, he can play in many positions and that’s very important for us.

“But for all of us it’s very good that in this generation in general there are very good relations between all the coaches and players of all the teams and this is very good news for handball.”

Spain’s top scorer going into the game is Daniel Dujshebaev on 39 whilst Richardson has top scored for the French with 35.