The hall still reverberates to the rhythm of the party of almost 20,000 fans, while Philipp Weber, taking stock in an adjacent hallway, takes it all in. “It’s incredible, just great,” the German left back beams. “Every match is like a dream.”
Weber has just ensured that the crowd, which was tense at the beginning but ultimately enjoyed a clinical performance in the second half, bounced into the Cologne evening. The hosts of the 2024 European Men’s Handball Championship have moved a step closer to the semi-finals after beating imposing but ultimately inferior Hungary with a convincing 35-28 win.
They have fought the disease in camp and there is no shortage of pressure: this is Germany’s second favorite sport and expectations are sky-high. The fever is not entirely dissimilar to the madness that will descend when football’s equivalent showcase arrives in June.
Four days later the arena is more subdued after Denmark, the tournament’s most technically gifted team, kept a clean sheet towards the end and let Germany tumble out. Sunday’s final sees the Danes face France in a bid to retain their title, but it will crown a month in which one of Europe’s most valuable cultural assets has gained valuable ground.
“Comparing this competition with 1994, when we only played in a small venue, is great,” said Martin Hausleitner, secretary general of the European Handball Federation, of an event that started with a record crowd of 53,586 when Germany defeated Switzerland in Dusseldorf. “We are experiencing the best tournament ever. We have never had so many spectators on site or on TV. The enthusiasm has spread and many people are talking about handball.”
This last statement is not necessarily new in Germany, where the sport grew in the early 20th century as an alternative to football. Around a sold-out Lanxess Arena, fans wear replica shirts of Bundesliga handball clubs or local grassroots clubs such as TSV Bonn and TV Witzhelden, demonstrating the reach of handball in a country with more than 800,000 active players.
It is not a novelty elsewhere in Europe either: Portugal, Georgia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Romania and the Faroe Islands are among the twenty countries represented at Euro 2024, alongside giants in Sweden, Spain, Germany and both of this year’s finalists.
Hausleitner is proud that almost 5,000 Faroese, almost 10% of the archipelago’s population, traveled in support and saw a creditable draw with Norway. Other strong contingents included 4,000 from Iceland, several of whom were there to see their side beat Croatia in a palate cleanser before Germany defeated Hungary, and as many as 10,000 who crossed the border to Hamburg and watched Denmark’s group stage matches.
“It has become an international event,” says Hausleitner. “People come from all over because they want to experience the European Championships.”
One potentially game-changing market is conspicuous by its absence. Handball has never really taken hold in Britain and for most Britons this championship, contested in front of so many crowds and international noise, must feel like it is taking place in a parallel universe. In collecting tournament accreditation the Observer is greeted half-jokingly with: “Well, this is a surprise. An Englishman came to watch handball.” Stubborn and without any explanation, it has never stuck on this side of the Channel.
“We would like to create greater visibility in Britain, it is our next step there,” says Hausleitner. Great Britain’s men’s and women’s teams competed in the 2012 Home Olympics but were roundly defeated. Just under £3m of funding was subsequently cut by UK Sport and it has barely made a ripple domestically since. There is virtually no impact on the younger generation.
Watching three intense, meaningful matches in Cologne, it’s not hard to see the appeal of handball. “We are a very dynamic sport on a small field,” Hausleitner said. “So you have to get close to the action. We think handball is tough, hard, but also very fair and respectful. We transfer these values to everyone in our environment.”
During the first 30 seconds of each tie, the team that starts in possession of the ball provides its opponents with feel for the ball by throwing it back and forth. Then the action begins: a seven-a-side game characterized by sharp rhythm changes and emphatic, explosive finishing, has little downtime and requires regular rolling substitutions. In some ways it’s a sport whose outcomes are decided when things don’t go to plan: goalkeepers aren’t allowed to pray when a 6-footer throws the ball at their net from a few yards away, so their interventions are often wildly celebrated. .
That’s why Frenchman Samir Bellahcene waves his arms in front of the crowd, sending the staff and teammates on the bench into a frenzy for a moment, as his courage and reflexes make three consecutive saves in the middle game of the evening against Austria. “Astonishing!” the stadium announcer says enthusiastically. There’s hype and razzmatazz here: music plays during breaks in the game, “Another one bites the dust” is broadcast when an Austrian player gets a two-minute suspension, and crowd participation is encouraged.
Proponents of handball point out that it is a sport for all body types: if you are the hulking, 6-foot-4 Austrian kingpin Tobias Wagner, you are welcome to pursue a career; this also applies if you belong to the German herd of lighter, agile and more waif-like talents. At least three-quarters of the players featured have a professional background and in the Bundesliga they can earn £1 million. The major countries have academy pathways and the task now is to use Euro 2024 as a springboard to more.
“We want to double our income by 2030,” says Hausleitner. “And we want to increase the number of fans because we know that 120 million Europeans are interested in handball, but perhaps only three million attend events regularly. And the biggest goal is to grow more grassroots players and implement more clubs for kids.”
Maybe one day these will pop up in Britain. For now, handball remains a secret that continental Europe hides in plain sight.