Italy take first EHF EURO win after 28-year drought
Even though Poland and Italy both go home after today’s match, they delivered a hard fight for a successful end to their Men’s EHF EURO 2026 journey — eventually won by Italy, 29:28, in the last 10 seconds of the game.
It is Italy’s third EHF EURO victory in history, but their first since they were the tournament hosts in 1998.
After the Italians clawed back a three-goal lead for Poland in the first half, they led until the last minute, when Mikołaj Czapliński turned the match around. After a faulty substitution from Poland with a tied match, Simone Mengon became the Italian hero, scoring the winning goal.
In last minute we did big mistakes. In the first half we lost a lot of balls. We were missing shots. In defence we get too many two minutes suspensions and it was problem. It's not just this last action that we can win this game. It's like this.
It's crazy feeling. We were waiting for a long time for this. We work hard, not just in last three weeks but last two years. We searched for this win for three games, It was hard in first two games, and today we finally did it. In the last 10 seconds we did a winning goal and it's like finally good feeling.
