The town of
Bugojno, Bosnia and Herzegovina, recently held the sixth annual edition of the ‘Handball is my Future’ men’s youth tournament.
Germany
debut win in 2018
The 2018
event featured players born in 2000 or later across eight teams: Germany (GER),
Croatia (CRO), Slovenia (SLO), Austria (AUT), Switzerland (SUI), Poland (POL),
Qatar (QAT) and hosts Bosnia and Herzegovina (BIH).
With all 20
games of the tournament taking place at the KSC Sports Hall, and streamed
online live, the Preliminary Round saw two groups of four teams each (Group A:
BIH, CRO, POL, GER) (Group B: SLO, SUI, AUT, QAT) with the top two sides going
straight through to the semi-finals onwards.
Despite 10
goals from Marin Sincic, Croatia lost to Erik Wudtke’s Germany in the final 26:24 (12:12).
Loris Kotte top-scored for the German side who were appearing in the tournament
for the first time.
Slovenia
beat Austria 29:20 (12:11) in the bronze medal match with Urban Starc scoring
eight times for Jani Klemencic’s Slovenia team, while in the 5/6 Placement match Bosnia and Herzegovina
lost against Switzerland 24:25 (13:13), and Poland avoided a last place finish,
beating Qatar 38:19 (21:9) in the 7/8 Placement.
Qatar’s young team attended the tournament
as part of their preparations for the upcoming 2018 AHF Asian Men’s Youth Championship in Jordan, in
August, while the European teams had the chance to prepare for the upcoming
summer of youth events which include the Men’s 18 EHF EURO in Croatia and Men’s 18 and 20 Championships in Austria/Georgia
and FYR Macedonia/Montenegro, respectively.
The
tournament also featured some of the top referee pairs in the world with IHF
couples Amar/Dino Konjicanin (BIH), Matija Gubica/Boris Milosevic (CRO),
Gjorgji Nacevski/Slave Nikolov (MKD) and Dusan Stojkovic/Nenad Nikolic (SRB)
whistling games.
History
‘Handball is my Future’ has been held in the centrally-located town in Bosnia and Herzegovina
every year since 2013 and is organised by local club MRK Iskra Bugojno,
supported by the Qatar Handball Association (QHA).
The first
edition of ‘Handball is my Future’ was held back in 2013 and featured the two age categories of Youth (U17
- 96/97) and Junior (U19 - 94/95) with Slovenia winning both tournaments and
the soon to be world-famous Blaz Janc (SLO) named best player in the junior
competition.
Countries
represented at the inaugural edition included SLO, QAT, BIH, CRO as well as
Slovakia (SVK), FYR Macedonia (MKD) and Serbia (SRB).
2014 again
had two age competitions (Youth – 98/99 and Junior – 96/97) with Slovenia again winning
both thanks to a 21:20 (10:10) victory over Qatar in the final of the junior
tournament and 20:19 (11:8) defeat of Croatia in the youth final.
Household names were again born in Bugojno as Urh Kastelic (SLO) was named best
goalkeeper and Filip Taleski (MKD) top scorer.
As the
tournament grew in stature, the dates were formalised to fit in with the IHF
global calendar of events and found its resting place across four days over the
international week in March/April. It also focussed on just one age group,
namely the U19, or youth category, with 2015 being solely for the 1996
generation. In that tournament Slovenia again won, beating Croatia 24:21
(13:10) in the final.
Players
born in 1998 or younger were also the focus of the 2016 edition and Slovenia,
for the first time in the tournament history, did not make the final as Croatia
ran away with the title, beating Poland 31:28 (13:13) to take the honours.
Last year’s edition saw Qatar Head Coach and
IHF Men’s World Championship winning coach Valero Rivera open the tournament for
the generation born in 1998 or younger and Slovenia got back to winning ways,
defeating Poland – who lost the final for the second year running – 23:22 (16:10).
HANDBALL
IS MY FUTURE: 2018 – FINAL RANKING
1 Germany
(GER)
2 Croatia
(CRO)
3 Slovenia
(SLO)
4 Austria
(AUT)
5
Switzerland (SUI)
6 Bosnia
and Herzegovina (BIH)
7 Poland
(POL)
8 Qatar
(QAT)
Best Player:
Juri Knoor (GER)
Best
Goalkeeper: Jaka Glavan (SLO)
Top Scorer:
Wanner Levin (SUI)
Photo: QHA