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THE HISPANOS LOST 

By Diego Navarro, Sofia Soler and Irene Birca 

In recent years, Spain has been a very powerful squad, having achieved the world champion title in 2005 and 2013. Also, in the last two world cups that took place in 2021 and in 2023 they placed third, giving an awesome performance. Moreover, in the Paris Olympic Games they won the bronze medal. Although, in the actual selection there are seven different players from the one that won the Olympic bronze so there was a lot of expectancy about the Hispanos results.  

The past 14th of January the handball world cup started where thirty-two selections would battle for the championship. The Spanish team, also known as the Hispanos, was part of group F with Sweden, Japan and Chile, having beaten Japan and Chile and tied with Sweden, one of the favourites selections to win the tournament. After this group phase, where three out of four participants pass to the next round joining to other of the other groups and making a group of six where the two best teams will take part in the quarterfinals. 

 

In this new group phase, Spain was in the group III, where Sweden, Portugal and Brazil were added to the previous group. The matches took place on Wednesday 22nd, Friday 24th and Sunday 26th respectively. These were really bad matches having lost all of them and with this, being eliminated from the world cup the Friday 24th playing on the 26th with no option to be in the quarterfinals.  

While the loss of the Hispanos is a big heartbreak the world cup had not finished, there were still four days of competition with seven exciting matches to watch and enjoy, being the four quarterfinals, two on the 28th and 29th, two semifinals, one on the 30th and 31st and the grand final on the 2nd of February. The favourite to win the world cup from the last eight teams was Denmark and this prediction was accomplished, Denmark won the tournament against Croatia by 32-26 and in third position Francia won to Portugal by only one point in an extremely exciting match.