WCh 2019 Day 2: Dominant Macedonia, strong start for Croatia, point for Serbia

Zlatko Horvat

After the opening day which gave us easy wins for the hosts Germany and Denmark, Day 2 brought us a lot more action. All three SEHA countries were in action.

Group B: Japan – Macedonia 29:38 (13:18)
Macedonia opened the day with a commanding win over Japan. Macedonian team was the better opponent from the very start, controlling the entire match, and slowly enlarging the lead that was +10 at its peak. Offensively it was a very good performance from Raul Gonzalez’s team, especially considering the 20 goals in the second half. Many players were in good form, especially Kiril Lazarov with 8 goals, Dejan Manaskov with 7 and the MVP of the match, Vardar’s Stojanche Stoilov, who scored 6 goals. Kuzmanovski and Peshevski added 4 goals each, Martin Popovski and Filip Taleski chipped in with three. Metalurg’s youngsters Serafimov and Tankoski were not on the scoresheet. Macedonia’s next match is against Bahrain in two days.

Group B: Iceland – Croatia 27:31 (14:16)
Iceland opened the match a bit better, but overall it was a very close first half. With two late goals in the 30th minute, Croatia managed to go on to the break with a 2-goal difference. Both teams had a good first half, especially early on when goals just kept on coming. Second half saw Iceland took the lead for a brief moment, but Cervar’s team responded brilliantly and won the match. Defensively last 10 minutes were terrific, and offense delivered as well. Overall, Stepancic was the MVP with 8 goals, Cindric scored 6 and Zlatko Horvat added 5. Vardar’s Igor Karacic scored 2, same as Nexe’s Marin Sipic, while PPD Zagreb’s David Mandic scored 1.

Group A: Serbia – Russia 30:30 (16:16)
A very tight first half, with a lot of goals. The pace was slightly slower in the second half, when Serbia had the lead for the vast majority of the match. It looked like the Serbian team will beat the favoured Russians, but 30 goals weren’t enough to secure two points. Overall, Serbia had the most of the match, and should have won it, especially when they were up 23:19 and 30:28. Nemanja Ilic with 6 goals and Stefan Vujic with 5 led the way for Serbia in this match. Vardar’s players were terrific for Russia, especially Timur Dibirov who scored an incredible 12 goals! Vardar’s Shishkarev and Meshkov’s Shkurinskiy scored 3 each, Kiselev had 2 and Kalarash contributed with one goal.

Manolo Cadenas and Argentina managed to surprise Hungary and snatch a point as it ended 25:25.

Overall, today, SEHA players scored 45 goals today. Vardar’s players scored 29, led by Timur Dibirov’s 12 and Stojanche Stoilov with 6.