Miraculous victory for Bahrain!

TDT | Manama                                                

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com     

Bahrain’s under-21 national handball team powered to a whopping 50-goal victory yesterday to ensure their first-ever berths in the main round of the IHF Men’s Junior World Championship.

Needing nothing less than a win by a wide margin to march through, the Bahrainis delivered masterfully as they romped past Greenland 63-13 in their final Group F fixture of the tournament’s preliminary round.

The massive winning gap helped them leapfrog Slovenia on their pool standings to second place and secure their place in the competition’s next stage.

The Slovenians lost to Group F winners Sweden 25-38 in yesterday’s other pool fixture.

Following both results, both Bahrain and Slovenia finished with three points on the table, but the nationals had a superior goal difference of 32, thanks to their big win against Greenland, while Slovenia were on 12.

The Bahrainis headed into yesterday’s game with a negative-18 goal difference, but were able to turn things around.

Bahrain are thus in Group III of the main round, along with Sweden and Group E top two Hungary and Denmark.

There are three other pools in this stage, with matches starting tomorrow.

Points obtained from the preliminary phase by teams from the same group are carried over.

Bahrain thus already have a loss against Sweden heading into their games against Hungary and Denmark.

The nationals need to finish in the top two to advance to the quarter-finals; otherwise, will play for ninth to 16th.

That would be their best finish in the junior worlds having been classified 17th overall the previous two times they played in the tournament in the 1995 and 2019 editions.

In Bahrain’s win yesterday, the nationals scored the first nine goals of the game before conceding Greenland’s first.

They only then allowed their opponents another goal after going ahead 22-1 heading into the last 10 minutes of the first half, which they ended with a commanding 33-5 advantage.

They continued their fantastic play in the last 30 minutes, en route to the insurmountable 50-goal win.

Jassim Khamis was the leading scorer of the game, firing in an impressive 15 goals for the Bahrainis.

He was later named the Player of the Match and received prize after the contest.

Mohamed Rabia and Ali Alasheeri contributed nine goals each, while Husain Saleh had seven and Abdulla Ali five.

Mahmood Alkhunaizi, Ahmed Kadhem, Ahmed Alzain and Ali Abdulla each had four goals, while Hasan Ali and Komail Ali rounded out the scorers with a goal apiece.

Archibald Tobias Lennert was the leading scorer for Greenland with four goals.