Four-time winners at the IHF Men’s World Championship and four-time European champions, Sweden have long sought the holy grail to complete their hat-trick of medals. However, they have failed to win the gold medal at the Olympic Games in nine tries, finishing second four times.

The golden generation of Swedish handball is long gone, yet something special is brewing once again in Scandinavia under the leadership of Glenn Solberg.

Coach Christian Berge has pushed the Norwegian men’s team up the mountain of world handball in recent years, but they are yet to reach the summit, winning two World Championship silver medals (2017, 2019), a bronze European championship medal (2020) and claiming a fourth-place finish in at the EHF EURO 2016.

The pulsating emotions of the partisan fans at the Future Arena back at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games propelled the Brazil men’s team to their best-ever ranking in their fifth Olympic experience.

However, their seventh-placed ranking could have been even higher had they not come up against the legendary French in the quarter-final. An emotionally drained Brazil were outclassed, losing 27:34, but that could fuel the fire of the squad going into Tokyo 2020.

Since their first Olympic Games participation in 1992, France have never finished lower than sixth place, winning two gold medals, a silver and a bronze.

Their golden generation, who secured wins at Beijing 2008 and London 2012 is now gone, but a new one is emerging, finishing fourth at the 2021 IHF Men’s World Championship in Egypt, after starting the tournament with seven wins in a row.

Unpredictable. That is the word which can be associated with the German men’s handball team in the Olympic Games not only in the last few editions, but this millennium.

A new dawn of handball in the United States of America is being headed up by the USA men’s national beach handball team, who could surprise many on the sand at Qatar 2019 after qualifying back in July with a gold medal at the first-ever edition of the North America and the Caribbean (NAC) Beach Handball Championship, which partly-replaced the Pan American event in which the USA won gold in 2016 and bronze in 2018.

With your continental rivals – and neighbours – the record winners of the IHF Men’s Beach Handball World Championship and with 200 million more people to choose players from, Uruguay have been perennial runners-up to Brazil.

The Uruguayans finished in second place to them at five of the former Pan American Championships, a record which was repeated in July, when the new South and Central America (SAC) Beach Handball Championship took place in Marica, Rio de Janeiro and Brazil beat Uruguay 2-0 in the final.

Mohamed Taboubi’s Tunisia men come to Qatar 2019 having booked their ticket to the debut World Beach Games with a gold medal at the 2019 African Beach Games, held in Sal, Cape Verde last June.

In Sal, Tunisia beat continental rivals Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco and Togo, in the final, 2-0, to take the first-ever continental beach title. A few weeks later they headed to Greece, to the second edition of the Mediterranean Beach Games where they ended in seventh place at the end of August.