Eighth-final in Ohrid

Sweden – Russia 21:25 (9:17)

The team from Russia have proved their ambitions at the Women’s Youth (U18) World Championship by winning their eighth-final match against Sweden with 25:21 in Ohrid. The Russian team is now facing the winner of the eighth-final between Denmark and France. Despite the sweaty temperatures in the arena, the Russian girls started to play highspeed handball. After a strong first half and after the first minute of the second half Russia was already on the winning streak. During this 31 minutes of the match they had built up a nine-goal lead by 18:9. Up to that moment Sweden had no chance to get into this match. Only when the Russians slowed down the pace, the Scandinavians came up and had the chance to reduce the gap. But it was no real catching up, because on this day Sweden was not able to endanger a much better team, who have now easily clinched their berth to the quarter-finals.

Eighth-final in Strumica

Montenegro – Argentina 31:22 (13:8)

Six matches, six victories: Montenegro has finally reached the circle of favourites for this Women´s Youth (U18) World Championship by playing a convincing eighth-final and beating Argentina clearly with 31:22. In the following quarter-final they will face the winner of the eighth-final between Norway and Brazil. From the beginning Montenegro was the better team and was heading to a clear victory. The result of 13:8 after the first 30 minutes – and especially the fact that they scored the first two goals in the initial stages of the second half (13:10) – gave Argentina little hope for a successful catch-up after the break. And they seemed to be lucky when the scored for the 16:17 after 40 minutes. But thanks to a very strong Montenegrin defence during the last 20 minutes the Pan-American team did not only fail to score for draw, but could not prevent to receive goal by goal, when Montenegro scored five times in a row up to 22:17. This intermediate result was pre-decicive: the Balkanese girls played dominantly until the end, while Argentina – after a great fight – resigned.