22nd Men's Handball World Championship - Poland - Chile 38:23 (15:13)

Poland beat Chile 38:23. Finally a fine victory. The first half didn't look the best, although Poland lead for the most of the time, but in the second the team rushed to the attack. Chile's defence played well at the beginning, but then Polish players found a way to go through it and also to stop opponents' attack.

Quite good game for the goalkeepers Sławomir Szmal and Piotr Wyszomirski. Both had to face penalties and they managed to save one each. Szmal was very good at the beginning of the first half, made a few good saves.

Wyszomirski played the second half. His biggest mistakes were quite unfortunate passes, which were snatched by the opponents (fortunately not used well in the most dangerous situation, the ball was thrown into the empty goal, but hit the post). However, overall he saved around 50% of shots.

Tommorrow Poland against South Korea. It's not going to be easy...

Tickets

Got tickets for the Friday games of the New Year Tournament in Handball which is going to take place in Gdynia, 6-8 January. The national teams of Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia are going to take part in it. Might also go to the Saturday games, but I haven't decided yet.

The tournament draws a lot of attencion and it seems that almost the whole Gdynia Sports Arena is going to be full of spectators.

So excited that I'm finally going to see live my favorite national team. Handball is nice to watch. It's a very fast game and almost all the time something is happening on the field. Besides this games also has goalkeepers.

Going to take a lot of photos!

New Year

So, it's a new year. It's over 10 months since I have this blog. Didn't had too much time for the regular updates lately and didn't even watch too much football. Need to catch up with Everton matches.

Hopefully some of the football players I miss are going to be back. Buffon should be ready to play again soon, and I hope the same will be with Quim. I also hope that 2011 is going to be a year when Ricardo finally changes his club! He doesn't have too much of the choice actually, his contract is going to expire in June.

The Men Handball World Chapionship in Sweden is going to begin at 13th of January and of course I'm going to follow the Polish team. What's more they are going to play at a small tournament in my city in the next week, which is going to be a part of their preparation and I hope that I will finally watch my national team live :)

Handball: Portugal vs Poland 27-27, 31 October 2010

No one did expect that. The Euro 2012 qualifier Portugal - Poland would end with a draw. And it was a lucky draw for Poland because surprisingly it was Portugal who led the game.

Didn't believe in what I saw. Poland is the fourth team of World Championship 2010. Portugal is on 23th place in the ranking. The difference between the game against Ukraine a few days later and the match against Portugal was unbelieveable.

I think Poland did underestimate the opponent. Portugal had a good strategy. A lot of Polish attacks were unsucesful and also the defense didn't help goalkeeper at all.

There is also one person who stood on the way of Polish team. Poruguese goalkeeper, Hugo Figueira. And I really don't care if most of the shots were easy to defend, or not strong enough. He did save also one to one situations and a penalty if I'm not wrong. Was on the right place and that's what counts. 17 shots saved. A man of the match for me.

Fortunately, Poland woke up near the end of the match and catched up with the result. Still, one point is better than nothing, but I hope that the next qualifier match is going to look better!

Good luck to Portguese handball team too. Two teams are going to get through the qualification stage. Both Poland and Portugal can play at Euro 2012, it would be ideal for me.

Copa del Rey: Real Murcia vs Real Madrid 0-0, 26 Oct 2010, video highlights

Watched Real Murcia - Real Madrid match at Tuesday. Wanted to focus on Casillas, of course, as I haven't seen him for a while in action, but I'm not sure if he had to make a single save in this game. Probably not. The whole show belonged to Dani Hernández, Real Murcia's goalkeeper.

It's not like Real Madrid didn't tried to score. They tried everything but all their efforts were either unsucessful or stopped by Murcia's goalkeeper. He made a lot of great saves. Liked the most the double one, when he deflected Cristiano Ronaldo's shot first, and the retake (showed in the highlights at 8:40). A man of the match, no doubt about this.

Real Madrid is a very unfortunate team, when it comes to Copa del Rey. They were eliminated two times in the row on 1/16 finale stage. In both cases they lost against Segunda Division 'B' clubs. Is the story going to repeat again?

No photos from the game with goalies, but I've found a video with long highlights, with all important actions and saves.

Watch the video highlights:



Tomorrow Poland - Ukraine qualifier match for European Handball Championship. Love watching this sport. So dynamic and interesting to follow. Polish national team is one of the best. But what's the most important - in this game there are goalkeepers too.

Sławomir Szmal - world's best handball player of 2009

Polish handballer Sławomir Szmal was chosen IHF World Player of the Year. He is the goalkeeper of the Polish national team. He is amazing, especially when it comes to saving in situations one to one.

In Euro 2010 Polish team finished on 4th place. Szmal's performance was outstanding. Will never forget dramatic third place playoff with Iceland. Poland's situation was hopless, everything went very, very wrong, and in the first half they were losing 18:10. And then in the second half Szmal defended six or seven goals in the row. Amazing. Poland eventually lost, but the team was fighting till the last moment. Szmal was chosen the best goalkeeper of the tournament.