On 11^th of January, it is time again for the 25^th Men’s Handball Championship, hosted by the International Handball Federation, shortly IHF.

This year France is the host nation. In 8 different cities 24 teams will be competing for the title World Champion 2017. The final is then on 29^th of January in Paris.

France has to defend its title because France was the winner of the World Men’s Handball Championship 2015 in Qatar, and it is a rule that the winner of the previous competition is automatically qualified for the next competition.

However France is also host nation and as a consequence was also automatically qualified. The IHF decided to allow Qatar,2^nd in the World Championship 2015, to be also automatically qualified for this competition.

Until 21 June 2016 the world teams fought to enter this competition. These nations are qualified for this competition in France.

In the first round of this competition the twenty-four teams are divided into 4 groups with six teams.

In the preliminary round of this competition every team has to play each other to get in the next round. The four best teams of every group qualify and then play in the knockout stage. Here we still have 16 teams competing. The quarter finals with 8 teams start 24^th of January, semi finals on 27^th/ 28^th January .

Then we will know which team will play the final and for the bronze medal.

Every match is 60 minutes and everybody who plays handball or has seen a match knows that handball is a very fast sport and everything can happen.

So let’s look forward to hopefully exciting matches and maybe Macedonia can surprise us….

By Dominik Daniel