The Dutch handball players were unable to continue their energetic start at the European Championship. After the sensational victory over host country Hungary in the opening match, a narrow defeat to Iceland followed in the second group match. The Orange lost in Budapest after a hectic final phase with 29-28.
Top scorer Kay Smits again played a leading role with no less than 13 goals. He was accurate seven times from a penalty throw. Dany Baijens scored six times. A foul by Samir Benghanem in the last minute prevented the Netherlands from drawing another draw.
The team of national coach Erlingur Richardsson now has to win the last group match against Portugal on Tuesday in order to advance to the main round. The Dutch team is participating in the European Championship for the second time and when it first participated two years ago, the team was eliminated in the group stage.
The Netherlands was absolutely not inferior to Iceland, which stunted with Olympic silver in Beijing in 2008. The opponent also had few secrets for the Dutch team, because national coach Richardsson is an Icelander and knew details about almost all players. Still, in the first 30 minutes, Iceland had the initiative most of the time in a duel that went up and down quickly. At halftime, Iceland led 15-13.
Immediately after the restart, things went wrong for the Orange. Iceland managed to run out to 20-15 fairly quickly because the energetic game came to a halt in the Netherlands and playmaker Luc Steins found no openings in the opponent’s cover. Moreover, due to time penalties, the team was often reduced to number.
Thanks to nice hits from corner player Bobby Schagen and Benghanem, the Orange squad hooked up again: 24-24. In the exciting final phase, sharp penalties from Smits were desperately needed to keep up, but star player Aron Palmarsson gave Iceland the lead with 1 minute left. There was still every chance of an equalizer for the Orange, but Benghanem took down an Icelander and thus prevented Smits from scoring his fourteenth goal. Iceland then played out the match routinely in possession of the ball in the last seconds.