MADRID, 28 One. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish men’s handball team reached its fourth final in a row in a European Championship this Friday by beating Denmark (29-25) at the Budapest Arena, another feat for the ‘Hispanics’ collection, who also secured their 17th medal in a great international event.
Spain, which played its sixth consecutive semifinal in a European Championship, did not miss its appointment with the last step, with a historical record of four consecutive finals. Those of Jordi Ribera dispatched their great executioner lately, last year in the ‘semis’ of the World Cup and also of the Olympic Games, to ensure one more metal.
The ‘Hispanos’ are a winning machine, regulars on the podium for more than a decade, despite the fact that, as in this championship in Slovakia and Hungary, they had to renew themselves against the clock without time for testing. Revenge against the Danes ensures a new Spanish podium in the European Championship, from which they have not come down since 2014 in search of the third gold in a row.
Spain seeks to emulate the great Sweden of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, which was able to string together three continental titles without opposition. In 2020 they already matched something that only the Swedes had done until now, reaching three finals in a row, and this Friday, with a tremendous second half in Budapest, they became the first national team to play four consecutively.
Spain also passed the penultimate European round in 1996, 1998 and 2006. In total, of the last 10 appearances in the semifinals, only in 2012 did they not get a medal. Nine metals already counting the one that will surely fall on Sunday, silver or gold, which make it the one that has conquered the most on a continental level by far.
This Friday was the 21st semifinal in major events for the national team, with a balance of nine wins, seven in European Championships and two in World Cups (2005 and 2013), and twelve losses. In the aforementioned 2012 and those of the World Championships of 2015, 2003 and 1999 no metal was achieved.
The streak of the ‘Hispanics’ chains four major medal tournaments since the 2020 European gold was joined last year by the bronzes at the World Cup in Egypt and at the Tokyo Olympics, now tying the seventeenth of their history distributed until moment in four golds, four silvers and eight bronzes.