Coach: Aron Kristjansson

Key Players: Mohamed Abdulhusain (Goalkeeper), Husain al-Sayyad (Centre back)

 

Qualification Information: 2018 AHF Asian Men’s Championship – Runners-up

 

History in Tournament: 1954-2009: DNQ, 2011: 23rd, 2013: DNQ, 2015: Withdrew, 2017: 23rd

 

“We have been in the World Championship before in Sweden and France, but we have not had success to go to the next round,” said Ismail Eatmadi, Bahrain’s team manager. “We will do our best this time and hope to play our best to make it to the next round.”

 

Those two appearances – in 2013 and 2017 – are the only times the nation have appeared at the senior level since the Bahrain Handball Association were founded and then became a member of the IHF in the mid-late 1970s. (Bahrain had qualified for Qatar 2015, but later withdrew.)    

 

The Bahrain handball league, where most of their athletes play, consists of 12 clubs in the top division and then younger ages, split into five categories (U12, U14, U16, U18, U20), with the Gulf archipelago nation having just over 1,500 registered players in the Kingdom.

 

Bahrain’s actual senior team experience can be summed up by two nations – Qatar and Iceland. In recent years, Bahrain have consistently finished as runners-up against the strong Qataris, most recently at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta (Indonesia), but Valero Rivera’s side were taken to addition time in the final by Bahrain, who had led at the break (14:13) hinting at a potential future shifting of continental power.

 

That near-miss for Qatar was forced by relatively new Bahrain coach, Icelander Aron Kristjansson, after the former Aalborg, KIF Kolding, Skern and Icelandic national coach took over from fellow countryman Gudmundur Gudmundsson earlier this year.

 

Kristjansson played his club handball in Iceland and Denmark, as well as making over 100 appearances for the Icelandic national team. He started his coaching career in 1990 with youth teams in Haukar, before taking his first major role as head coach for his former club team, Skjern, in Denmark in 2004. Spells in Germany, the national team and two more clubs in Denmark then followed before he took up the reins in Bahrain.

 

He will open his World Championship with Bahrain with the group B opener against Spain and will also have to face Croatia, FYR Macedonia and Japan – led by fellow Icelander Dagur Sigurdsson. And to continue the Icelandic theme of group B – the nation themselves will be in the group.

 

Voted best centre back at the 18th Asian Games in Indonesia in August, Bahrain’s captain Husain al-Sayyad, alongside goalkeeper Mohamed Abdulhusain, are the two leaders who will be hoping they can guide Bahrain to a higher position than 23rd – the final ranking recorded at their two previous experiences at World Championships.

 

To prepare his squad for their third-ever senior World Championship, Kristjansson starts his training camp on 1 December in Bahrain before travelling to Iceland where they face the national team twice between 27-31 December. From 1-10 January they are in Innsbruck (Austria) where they play three matches in a tournament before moving to Munich.

 

Follow Bahrain at Germany/Denmark 2019 through their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

 

Group at Germany/Denmark 2019

Group B: Spain, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Iceland, Bahrain, Japan

 

Games at Germany/Denmark 2019

All times local

 

Friday 11 January            Bahrain vs Spain

Sunday 13 January          FYR Macedonia vs Bahrain

Monday 14 January        Iceland vs Bahrain

Wednesday 16 January  Crotaia vs Bahrain

Thursday 17 January       Bahrain vs Japan

 

IHF & Germany/Denmark 2019 Official Channels

Follow the 2019 IHF Men’s Handball World Championship on our website as well as on our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. And make sure you don’t miss anything on the World Championship’s official Facebook and Instagram channels.

 

Photo: Bahrain Handball Federation