Thinking of the last European Championship in Austria still horrifies the German handball players. Back then the World Champion of 2007 only finished tenth. The consequence: At the draw for the World Championship in Sweden the Germans, due to this ranking, were drawn in a Preliminary Round group with title holder France and Spain. During the WCh tournament the players from Kiel, Gummersbach, Berlin, Göppingen and Flensburg still brood over the consequences of the Austrian disaster. In the WCh Preliminary Round in Kristianstad, the team celebrated expected victories over Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia, but they lost the matches against Spain and France. In the second half France tore the selection of the German Handball Federation to pieces. Beforehand the Spaniards, who had been three goals down, played ten outstanding minutes before the end and finally won. Thus the team of coaching legend Heiner Brand carried the defeats on to the Main Round; the goal of reaching the semi-final had already been out of reach before they moved to Jönköping. “I don’t give attention to hypotheses”, Brand admits. “We now concentrate on reaching at least a position entitling the team to participate in the Olympic qualification.” For the 58-year-old coach Sweden could become a “déjà vu”, as six years ago at the continental championship in Switzerland his team hadn’t succeeded in making up for the lost points of the Preliminary Round. Back then the Germans tied with Spain and lost against France. Their opponents in the Main Round were Ukraine, Slovenia and Poland, and they won all matches. As the Iberians and the French also achieved to defeat those teams, the Germans only reached the fifth-place play-off in the end. Bearing in mind their unsteady performance over the last months, the German team would certainly not complain about a fifth rank in Sweden – and would probably refer to the title contests as the tournament of the wasted opportunities afterwards.