Three continents are represented in the boys’ semi-finals of the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing - and thanks to the final ranking of the preliminary round definitely two continents will be part of the final. On Sunday first the Arab teams of Egypt (defending YOG champions) and Qatar will compete for the final spot, followed by the all-European semi Norway vs. Slovenia.

Egypt vs. Qatar (18:00 hrs. local times)

Defending champions vs. emerging debutants - this is the duel in the first semi. Since the awarding of the 2015 Men’s World Championship, Qatar handball is improving constantly - and nowadays the desert team holds all male continental titles at the same time: Qatar is youth, junior and men’s Asian champion, and they won the Asian Youth Games handball final against their biggest rival Korea to make it to Nanjing.

Five weeks after the Qatar male Beach Handball team took the first ever medal for their federation at any IHF World Championship (bronze in Brazil) now the boys fight for the biggest success ever in younger age categories.

The 26:23 win over Tunisia in their opener was the base for clinching the berth for the semis for Qatar, but after this early qualification they were taken down on the floor by Slovenia, getting taught a free lesson (12:33). But despite this result Qatar is ambitious to make it to the final.

In contrast to Qatar the Egyptians did not only win both preliminary round matches in Nanjing (28:27 against Norway and 29:23 against Brazil), but can look back on a long history of success in younger age category handball: Still Egypt is the only non-European Junior World Champion (1993 on home ground) and since then they were three times semi-finalists in this age category. In 2010 they became first ever Youth Olympic Games gold medallist after beating the favoured French team in the semi and later Korea in the final.

So Egypt have to take the favourite’s role in the first semi, not only as their statistics are clearly better in attack (57:49) and defence (50:61) compared to Qatar.

Norway vs. Slovenia (20:30 hrs. local times)

Can Norway take revenge on the 23:28 defeat in the final of the 2013 European Youth Olympic Festival in Utrecht (Netherlands) or will Slovenia again be victorious? This is the main question prior to the all-European semi-final in Nanjing. Both sides are debutants at Youth Olympic Games, and Norwegian boys did not even make it to a single semi-final of IHF competitions before, as the male handball players mostly were in the shadows of the successful women (World, European and Olympic champions and Junior World Champions).

In contrast, Slovenian boys know how to win medals: In 2003 and 2009 they became bronze medalists at Junior World Championships, 2004, 2010 and 2012 they finished the European junior championships also on the bronze rank, before winning the European Olympic Youth Festival in 2013 was their first ever continental title.

In the preliminary round Norway were defeated by Egypt, but beat Brazil closely to make it to the semi, while Slovenia easily marched through to the next stage after clear wins over Tunisia and Qatar, having the best goal difference of all six team (+36), scoring the highest number of goals (71 compared to 60 of Norway) and conceded the lowest number of goals in defence (35 compared to 59 of Norway).