Summary: Denmark in semi-finals; Norway, Germany win
The Women's EHF EURO 2024 main round came to an end on Wednesday in Vienna. Denmark won the clash to reach the semi-finals for a third successive European championship, while Norway and Germany took comfortable wins over Switzerland and Slovenia respectively.
The job we have been doing in the last two days inside the team has been amazing. The players and the staff really deserve a lot of credit for this performance today. Of course, the goalkeeper (Anna Kristensen) was really strong and the defence was strong and I actually think that the four-goal advantage didn't show the right picture. I think we were the better team today.
15:00
Slovenia and Germany are warming up ahead of their match at 15:30 CET. It's just pride at stake and a desire to finish as high up the rankings as possible. Currently, Slovenia are ranked fourth in the group and Germany fifth.
14:30
A bit of news today which won't affect any of the upcoming matches: Poland's Marlena Urbanska has received a two-match suspension after her red card in yesterday's game against Romania. Read more here.
14:00
The stat of the day focuses on Switzerland, the most disciplined team at the EHF EURO 2024, as they have picked up the fewest penalty minutes per game at 3.7 on average – just nine two-minute suspensions plus two direct red cards. That could remain the case in their game against Norway today, as no other team's opponents receive as few penalty minutes as the Scandinavian’s (5.0).
13:33
The key match today is between Denmark and the Netherlands, with a semi-final place at stake. Yesterday we found out how the teams are feeling about the game.
Our strength will be the defence, if we can manage to do it as well as we did against Germany and Norway. And I think we have played well in the attack as well. So if we can kind of combine the two things, it will be great. The Netherlands have world-class players on every position. So we need to really step up and be prepared because we know it's going to be difficult.
Denmark is better for us than the Norway game was. Norway has a strong defence and they ran a lot of counter-attacks, but against Denmark, we are more equal and then it's about small details in the attack and in defence, which are going to decide the game. It's going to be a close game, a tough game, but both teams will throw everything in to reach the semi-final. Overall, we can be really proud that we are so close, but if you are so close, you also want to achieve it.
