EHF EURO winners Germany, Olympic gold medallists Denmark exit World Championships after Last 16

It does not happen that often in sport that a “day to forget” comes true for several of the best across a number of disciplines. However, on Sunday this was the case.

In the early morning hours European time, tennis’ no.1 players, Brit Andy Murray and German Angelique Kerber, lost their Last 16 matches at the Australian Open, then, around 12 hours later, handball’s Olympic champions Denmark and EHF EURO winners Germany lost their first knockout stage matches against Hungary (27:25) and Qatar (21:20) respectively.

“Maybe we didn’t take that match serious enough,” said German goalkeeper Andreas Wolff after the loss to Qatar.

For Germany it was the second consecutive loss to the 2015 silver medallists on World Championship level. At Qatar 2015, the tournament hosts had beaten Germany in the quarter-finals.

With 15 minutes left on the clock, Germany seemed to be comfortably in the lead at 17:13, but then Qatar’s left back Rafael Capote, who scored the last four goals for his team and nine overall, and goalkeeper Danijel Saric, who showed a brilliant performance between the posts, turned the match around.

“We weren’t concentrated enough,” said Germany head coach Dagur Sigurdsson whose time with the German team, marked by EHF EURO 2016 gold and 2016 Olympic bronze, came to an abrupt end. His coaching future lies in …

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