IHF U19 Handball World Championship:
Iran’s fairytale run ends in last-16 dismay
A second successive defeat dashed Iran’s hopes of a historic last-eight berth at the IHF Men’s U19 Handball World Championship in Croatia.
Having suffered a 26:29 loss to Saudi Arabia in the main-round opener, Majid Rahimizadeh’s boys were beaten 32:25 by Germany – runner-up in the previous edition – on Tuesday to finish bottom of Group IV.
Max Günther produced a player-of-the-match performance, scoring a game-high eight goals, as the Germans bounced back from a 30:28 setback against the Faroe Islands on the preceding night.
Amirhossein Masoudnia topped the scoring for Iran with seven.
Iran had a shaky start, scoring only once in eight minutes, and Germany made the most of it to propel to a 9:4 lead.
German shot stopper Marc Julian Buchele enjoyed an impressive first half with nine saves out of 18 attempts as the European side took a 13:9 advantage into the break.
Iran kept fighting after the restart and narrowed the gap to three with 15 minutes remaining but technical errors proved costly for the Asian side and led to Germany going on a 5-0 run for a 28:20 lead before ultimately walking away with the victory.
The Iranian boys will perhaps rue the defeat against Saudi Arabia – beaten by Iran in last year’s Asian Championship semifinals – where Rahimizadeh’s team gave away a halftime four-goal lead in the second period.
Later on Tuesday, the Faroe Islands came out victorious (41:23) against the Saudis to join Germany in progressing to the quarterfinals.
Iran, meanwhile, will still be looking for a bit of consolation when taking on Brazil today in the first of the 13th-16th placement matches.
Having last appeared in the tournament 14 years ago, Iran got off to decent start in Croatia, holding handball powerhouse Sweden to a 26:26 draw in Group H opener.
Iran then edged the Faroe Islands by two goals (29:27) before a 46:24 rout of Burundi sealed a top-spot finish in the group for the country.