LAYING OUT THE PATH TOWARDS HUNGARY-SLOVAKIA 2O22

The road to the Men’s EHF EURO 2022 in Hungary and Slovakia became a lot clearer, for better or worse, for the 32 teams set to battle for 20 remaining spots at the final tournament.
While a few teams now feel confident that they will join the host nations plus 2020 finalists Spain and Croatia at the championship, the future for many others remains uncertain after the eight qualification groups were drawn.
Here are some of my reflections following Tuesday’s draw event.

Tight at the top

Group 3, featuring Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine and Faroe Islands, appears to be the most wide-open of the eight groups.
The top three seeds have shown major fluctuations in form in recent years, displaying the capability for impressive and underwhelming performances in equal measure.
Russia and Ukraine dropped out of EHF EURO 2020 without a win and while the Czechs came through arguably the softest preliminary round group, they finished bottom in the main round.
Then we throw Faroe Islands into the mix, who came within an inch of beating Ukraine in qualification last year and it would not surprise me if they snatched a point or two in this group.
A close second in this category is group 4, where the evenly-matched Iceland and Portugal will be challenged by the two sides which missed out on qualification for 2020 by the narrowest of margins – Lithuania and Israel