Hello there they are once more! Four days following beating the Danish world champions (30-29) to open the doors to the semi-finals, the Olympic champions will meet the world champions once morest them this Sunday to end this tournament. But it will not be in the final, in the one dreamed of to end this Euro-Covid which will only be a good memory for its winner, Spain or Sweden. It will be for the small final, the one that will award a quickly forgotten bronze medal and a chocolate charm.
This opposition promises to be royal but with less glitter and less tension. Sunday, January 30 followingnoon, we will have in the blue corner, France which measures the planet hand with its three Olympic titles, its six World Championships and three European coronations; in the red corner, Denmark advances with an Olympic title, two world triumphs and two continental titles. With Russia, France and Denmark are the only countries to have won the Games, the World Championships and the Euro.
62e confrontation
Yes, it is still royal this poster. But it has also become commonplace: a France-Denmark is a classic that comes up often, sometimes too often, with one or even two annual oppositions. This was the poster for the last two Olympic finals in Rio where the Vikings had triumphed (28-26) before the Blues took their revenge in Tokyo. The final in Budapest will be the 62nd confrontation between the two selections. France leads 30 wins to 27 for 4 draws.
The last victory of the Blues does not go back very far: this Wednesday in what looked like a quarter-final for the French team which had no right to lose. The end of the game was breathtaking. On TFX, 857,000 spectators did not miss anything. For the occasion, the Danes had left their star Mikkel Hansen to rest. Nikola Karabatic’s office colleague at PSG will obviously be on the pitch on Sunday and that will change everything.
Against the Blues, the Vikings remain on two defeats: in Tokyo and Budapest. They have no intention of being pushed around once more. Especially since Wednesday’s setback, which eliminated Iceland at the same time, did not remain without consequence. On social networks, Danish players have received… death threats from angry Icelandic fans who blame them for letting the end of the match slip away: “I received messages from some Icelanders on Instagram, people said what they thought of me and my performance during the match,” Aalborg player René Antonsen told Danish channel TV2 Sport.