In summary, a great start for our season. We finished 2nd in our pool, a solid ranking. The game of the day for us was against Romania, with a win we did not expect. Romania struggled with discipline the whole day, not just against us. At one point in their match against Sweden, they had only 4 players left on the pitch because of yellow cards. Despite these yellow cards, they’re a strong team, with skills. They finished in the best 3rds, and will be in the top 8 as well.

The game against Sweden was influenced by our strategy on the first day, minimize the point difference because it could matter at the end. Defend well and hold on to the ball. From the moment we didn’t see that we could win, it was important to think about the tournament. We had discussed that the day before. Against a team like Sweden, it’s difficult to just hold on to the ball, but we tried.

The last game showed to be a real struggle in the 2nd half especially. We were losing too many balls in small mistakes, making it difficult to ourselves. On the other hand, Israel was good at keeping the ball alive which gave them the chance to test different options in attack. They had a lot of opportunity to score, only stopped by the intensity of our defense, and the solidarity between players.

Sunday, we play Finland in the quater finals. They had a strong finish on Saturday, with a win against the strong Georgian team. They also beat the host nation Hungary, but could not do much against Portugal, a clear favorite in this competition.

We’ve played Finland at the nordic training camp three months ago. Two loss, one win. It’s going to be a tough game. Finland always is strong in defense, it is difficult to score against them. And in attack, they are well organised and routined. After that game, we’ll play either Germany or Turkey.