Campeones, campeones! Spain — the 2020 European Champion!

Five EHF EURO 2020 medals are coming to Kielce! Alex Dujshebaev, Daniel Dujshebaev, Julen Aginagalde and Angel Fernandez are the new European Champions, and the silver medal was won by Igor Karačić with the Croatian team.

Anyone who has followed the EHF EURO 2020, which ended just yesterday, will probably admit that the Spanish-Austrian matches could be watched endlessly! The tournament ladder gave us two such events, which can definitely be considered one of the best matches of the competition, right next to e.g. the Croatia vs. Germany match, won 25:24 by the Croatian team at the very end (PGE VIVE Kielce players’ performance in the match was phenomenal, Igor Karačić scored 7 goals, and Andreas Wolff — 13 defenses) or the tied Denmark vs. Hungary match (24:24).

The first match between Spain and Croatia, which took place in Vienna as part of the main round of the championship, could not be resolved — it ended in a 22:22 draw, although fifteen minutes before the final whistle, the Croatian team were down six goals at 14:20. The second — deservedly — was in the finals of the tournament and here the Spaniards proved to be just a little bit better, beating their rivals 22:20. The key goal was scored in the very last minute by the PGE VIVE playmaker Alex Dujshebaev, who had not scored a single goal up to that point.

This means that four gold medals are coming to Kielce. The Kielce players being part of the Spanish national team gave a great performance playing in Norway, Austria and Sweden, and Alex Dujshebaev and Angel Fernandez became the most effective players of their team — Alex scored 36 goals in nine matches and Angel 33 in eight matches.

Igor Karačić will bring silver back to Kielce. It was a very successful tournament for our playmaker as well, who was hailed MVP three times, and eventually “Kara” was also hailed the best center of the competition. Igor Karačić and Domagoj Duvnjak (the MVP of the entire championship), led Croatia through the European Championship, assisting, scoring penalty throws and scoring 35 and 36 goals respectively.

The Slovenian team did not manage to win a medal, they lost 20:28 to Norway in the bronze medal playoff. However, our player, Blaž Janc, together with Igor, were hailed the best right winger in the All-Star tournament.

The fifth place of the tournament belongs to the German team with Andreas Wolff, who defeated Portugal 29:27 in the match for the fifth place. The PGE VIVE Kielce’s goalkeeper scored 2 goals and made 11 saves in this match. Partnered with Johannes Bitter they became a very reliable goalie duo that saved the German team at critical moments of the tournament matches (the only matches in which they did slightly worse were the ones against Spain and Latvia, in the other matches they had a very high save success rate).

PGE VIVE Kielce players took the following places in EHF EURO 2020 with their national teams:

1 — Spain (Alex Dujshebaev, Daniel Dujshebaev, Julen Aginagalde, Angel Fernandez),

2 — Croatia (Igor Karačić)

4 — Slovenia (Blaž Janc, Uroš Zorman — assistant coach),

5 — Germany (Andreas Wolff),

10 — Belarus (Artsem Karalek, Uladzislau Kulesh),

18 — Montenegro (Branko Vujović),

21 — Poland (Arkadiusz Moryto, Mateusz Kornecki, Sławomir Szmal — assistant coach)

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This article was translated by FATIX. If you are looking for professional translation services, check them up at www.fatix.eu.