The Hungarian women’s national handball team have finished third at the 2024 European Women’s Handball Championship jointly organized by Hungary, Austria, and Switzerland. They beat France 25–24 in the play-off for third place.
This is an impressive feat last achieved 12 years ago by our girls. This is the fourth time Hungary have finished third in the competition, after 1998, 2004, and 2012. In addition, Hungary also have a gold medal from 2000.
In this year’s tournament, Hungary won the first six of their games in the preliminary and the main round, before running into their first loss against reigning World Champions France. That, however, did not matter much, as Hungary had already qualified for the semi-final. In the semi-final in Vienna, Austria, head coach Vladimir Golovin’s girls fell short against Norway (who went on to win the tournament), so they were facing France again for the bronze medal, also in Vienna.
France took a 5–3 lead early in the game. However, Hungary have turned it around and led 10–7 by the 25th minute. The first half ended with a one-goal Hungarian advantage, 13–12.
While there were some brief periods when the game was tied, and even a short French lead about 10 minutes before the final buzzer, Hungary was ahead for most of the time in the second half. They took the lead for the last time in the last minute of the game, with right back Katrin Klujber of Ferencváros serving a fantastic assist to right wing Viktória Győri-Lukács (Győr) who set the final scoreline, 25–24.
Klujber finished the Euros with 60 goals total, making her the top scorer in the competition. She is the fourth Hungarian player to get that personal honour at the European Championship. But it was not just Klujber who performed brilliantly at the championship: beside her, Győri-Lukács and Petra Simon also got selected for this year’s All-star Team.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary took to his Facebook page to congratulate the national team for their impressive third-place finish. The caption of the image he shared reads: ‘The future has started’ in Hungarian.
‘I can see it in all our eyes that we are proud of each other and what we have achieved. This is not something that one can attain every day. It was quite incredible the way we were fighting for each other. We deserved to win this way. When the game was over, I couldn’t believe what had just happened, my eyes teared up. All I saw was our left wing Nadine [Szöllősi-Schatzl] coming at me, and we embraced,’ top scorer and star player Klujber recalled her reaction to the great victory to the Hungarian sport daily Nemzeti Sport.
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