Hungary finish in fifth with victory over France while Croatia lose to Sweden, but finish in their best-ever position at an IHF Women’s Youth World Championship.
Sunday 31 July
Placement Match 5/6: Hungary vs France 34:31 (18:16)
Hungary beat France to finish fifth and equal their best position at any previous U18 world championship while the 6th place for France is their highest position since 2010, when they finished fourth.
While Hungary were in front for the whole match, France drew level a number of times as they tried to claim a spot in the top five.
Hungary were impressive in the first moment as at 3:1, Csenge Fodor, on the floor having slipped received a pass, passed back and then received again to score.
The key to the game in the final moments were two-minute suspensions for France, first when they had come back to 25:26 and then again with under a minute left as Soukeina Sagna ended her tournament.
France had the momentum, even though they were 33:31 down, but with six players on court, their chance was over.
Best Players of the Match: Noemi HAFRA (HUN), Soukeina SAGNA (FRA)
Placement Match 7/8: Croatia vs Sweden 18:23 (10:10)
Despite losing this match, the final ranking of eight place for Croatia is their best-ever at this level, bettering their 10th place in 2014.
For Sweden, they will be happy to end with a win, but as past winners of the competition back in 2010, they know there is work to do.
Croatia, missing their influential playmaker Matea Plestikovic, could not break down the Sweden wall enough times despite the best efforts of goalkeeper Magdalena Ecimovic.
“Our first goal was to be in the best eight so we achieved that,” said Croatia coach Ivan Jerkovic to IHF.info after the match. “We had a problem with the injury of Matea Plestikovic, she is our best player and maybe most important player.
“We were very good in defence but we had a lot of problems in attack, this game also showed we only scored 18 goals and if you score that many you cannot win the game.
“Had we had Matea maybe we would have had more chances in attack and in the game against Denmark when she got injured if we had had her in attack we would have been more confident in winning - we don’t know if we had won that game, but Denmark would have had more problems for us.”
Upon reflection, Jerkovic was happy with the Croatian team’s performance at Slovakia 2016 and is looking to improve further in the future.
“I saw that lots of teams are improving and are going to a high level,” he said. “I saw we improved some things especially fast-breaks and some teams have a faster game than us, but we were in the best eight and in time I hope we can keep in it in the future.”
Before the Croatian team left to travel home after lunch he had some words of encouragement for the Croatian men’s team at Rio 2016.
“The message for the boys out there is that we hope for the medal,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it is gold, silver or bronze – we hope for any medal which will cheer up the whole Croatian nation.”
Best Players of the Match: Katarina MRAZOVIC (CRO), Rebecca NILSSON (SWE)