Bouncing back from a previous defeat and the loss of their left back Pascal Hens, world titlist Germany outscored African champion Egypt 25-23 at the Beijing Olympic men's handball event in Beijing on Thursday.
As the winner of the 2007 World Championship, Germany suffered a stunning defeat on Tuesday, conceding 29-33 to dark horse Iceland. Left back Pascal Hens injured his knee badly in the defeat and had to end his Olympic journey.
"We knew that this match would be a hard-earned one. To be honest, yesterday we had a really bad day because of Pascal Hens' injury. So we were insecure at the beginning of the match. The Egyptians were on fire, they are playing an excellent tournament so far. But we battled them down, so I tip my hat to my team," said German right wing Florian Kehrmann.
African champ Egypt played aggressively in the first half, left back Hussein Zaky scored seven goals to help the team tie Germany 14-14 at the interval. However, world champion Germany seized control of the second half. They tightened their defence and gave Hussein Zaky "special care", which made the 29-year-old Egyptian end scoreless after the break.
"This win was really important for us. The whole team bounced back. We kept up our level of play during the whole match. Our fighting morale was excellent. Everybody in our team wanted that victory," said Holger Glandorf, right back of Germany.
Talking about the injury in the team, German coach Heiner Brand said,"So far as I know, Hens has already arrived in Germany safe and sound. He will receive further treatment. We haven't talked much about him because we have learned not to panic. In 2007 at the World Championship (which they won), many of our players were injured."
"I hope that Hens was awake back in Germany at three o'clock in the morning (and watched the game on TV) and I hope he was awake not because he was in pain," added Florian Kehrmann.
Having suffered two last-seconds setbacks beforehand, the Egyptian side were not satisfied with the referees and refused to attend the post-match conference.
(Xinhua News Agency August 14, 2008)