Despite the clear 28:39 defeat at the World Championships against defending champions Denmark, Swiss national coach Andy Schmid is proud of his team. Comments on the game.
24.01.2025, 00:56
24.01.2025, 01:05
SDA
"It's absurd that you can feel a certain satisfaction when you lose by eleven goals, but I do," says Schmid. "I'm enormously proud that we didn't make many technical mistakes, we weren't overrun. There are difficult away games for a national team, and then there are the most difficult. We experienced the latter today. What Denmark has shown in recent years and currently is not world class, but a step above it."
Schmid came up with a special idea for the game against Denmark: Mathias Gidsel, currently the best handball player in the world, was man-marked by Noam Leopold right from the start. "I wouldn't have forgiven myself if we had gone into the game like all the other teams before and been overrun," says Schmid.
The measure initially had an effect, but the Danes quickly adapted to it and pulled away. Gidsel praised the Swiss for their proactive approach, even though he found it boring. He said the same to Schmid, who replied that he could be substituted. However, Gidsel also saw advantages in Schmid's move: "It gave us too much space, which we used well. In the end, it's all about the team." Side note: Despite the man-to-man defense, Gidsel scored six goals.
Swiss defensive boss Samuel Röthlisberger said of the fact that the Danes had more space: "We wanted to live with that." The 2(-year-old had mixed feelings after the game. "You never like scoring almost 40 goals. But we dealt with it well, tried things out at the front and back," said Röthlisberger. What makes it so difficult against the Danes? "Everyone is extremely strong one-on-one. Then they all move quite cleverly without the ball and go into the gaps. And I don't know of any team that relies so heavily on speed."
Noam Leopold, who scored five goals and, together with Felix Aellen, was the Swiss team's most successful scorer, spoke of a season highlight. However, he was also self-critical, as he had failed to beat the outstanding Danish keeper Emil Nielsen (23 saves in total) with his first three shots. "I put the team in trouble with that. But I'm learning from it." How did he deal with the false start? "After that, I had even less to lose, it couldn't get any worse. After that, I wanted to win the duel against Emil, which I managed to do."
After a rest day, the Swiss will play their final match on Saturday against Italy, who have one point more to their name. Schmid says: "We have to get the last few centiliters of gas left in the tank onto the pitch."
