Photo: Bildbyrån
Sweden crushed Japan in the World Cup premiere in Norwegian Bærum.
After the match, criticism poured in on the organizers after only 1,685 people turned up to watch the match, in an arena that holds 12,000.
– This was a pretty good answer to the old men in suits that you can’t just put a championship somewhere, says league captain Michael Apelgren to Sportbladet.
Sweden won its opening match in the men’s handball World Cup against Japan by a whopping 39-21. The team’s leading player Jim Gottfridsson showed good form, despite having a shaky season at club team SG Flensburg-Handewitt. On the other hand, he scored the most goals (8). Sebastian Karlsson. On Saturday, Chile awaits and Sweden are of course big favorites then too.
Disappointed Swedes despite the victory
After the final whistle against Japan, most of the talk was about the lousy attendance figures in the arena in Bærum outside Oslo. Only 1,685 people saw the match in place in a hall that holds 12,000, in other words, the rows of seats were quite empty.
– This was probably a pretty good answer to the old men in suits that you can’t just put a championship somewhere and think that a lot of Swedes or Japanese will travel there like at a football World Cup. Our sport of handball apparently needs to be wise in where we put the championships. Because otherwise it could look like this, says the national team captain Michael Apelgren to Sportbladet.
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In fact, it is the worst attendance figure for a Swedish championship game in six years. The last time was during European Championship 2018 in Zagreb, when 1,400 people watched the fight against Belarus. In the World Cup context, it was ten years ago that the audience figure was so low, then during the Qatar World Cup 2015.
Michael Apelgren’s criticism after the WC premiere
Sweden’s national team directs sharp criticism at the organizer who set the game schedule and got the crowd teams Sweden and Norway into the same arena. This means that the arena is largely empty during the championship, when they are not playing. Now it also affected the Swedish national team.
– There weren’t many people. It cannot possibly have been 1685 here. It felt like there were 500, like in Lillekärrshallen at home in Kärra, says the national team player Jonathan Carlsbogård.
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Michael Apelgren is amazed how you can have so few people in place during a world championship. It has previously been discussed that it is strange that the WC is organized in three countries: Norway, Denmark and Croatia. There is plenty of potential for improvement in the future.
– There are probably a lot of excuses, but it is actually the handball World Cup. I think everyone involved is disappointed that more didn’t come, says Apelgren.
What do you think about this? Does Sweden have the right to be so disappointed after the premiere when there were so few people in the stands? Please write a comment! Share and like-mark the article.
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