An American's guide to the World Handball Championship

Your favorite Olympic sport actually exists outside of the Olympics! I talked to two American handball experts about Team USA's hopes at this year's World Championships.

Every four years, you put on the Olympics and watch handball, the electric sport where 6-foot-7 Danish guys leap into the air and whip 80 mph fastballs past helpless goalkeepers. You think to yourself: “this is awesome—too bad it’s impossible for me, an American, to watch this sport outside of this two-week window every four years.”

Well, I have some spectacular news.

Today is the start of the 2025 IHF World Men’s Handball Championship in Norway, with some games played in Croatia and Denmark. It’s available to stream in the United States on ESPN3. And unlike the 2024 Olympics, Team USA will be competing.

It’s a critical time for American handball. Just three years remain before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, when Team USA will be guaranteed automatic bids to play, their first Olympic bids since… 1996, the last time the United States hosted the Olympics and American teams got automatic bids. And how Team USA performs in these World Championships will be a great indicator of where they’re at. Two years ago, they had their best performance ever, beating Morocco and Belgium and advancing out of the tournament’s preliminary round.

Can Team USA build on its 2023 run and the Olympics looming? To find out, I connected with two of America’s biggest handball heads: There’s John Ryan, who played for Team USA in the 1993 World Championships and now runs Team Handball News. And there’s J.D. Orr, who coaches Ohio State’s club handball team and was set to be a member of the Team USA staff at the 2021 World Championships before a teamwide COVID outbreak.

John and JD are both traveling to Norway to watch Team USA play, and they’ll be providing pre-game and post-game coverage of all Team USA’s matches here. You can find John’s website, Team Handball News here on Twitter, and J.D. here on Twitter and Instagram.

I called them up to ask a handful of questions about the tournament and what fans can expect from Team USA, which plays its first game Wednesday afternoon against Portugal. (Interviews were edited for brevity and flow.)

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Let’s say Team USA wins a game. What does that look like? Who is it against, how do they pull it off, who are the star players?

John: The USA is going to win a game. I sure as hell hope so, because there’s a consolation bracket, and we’ll go down there and play similar teams. Only one team is going home with goose eggs, and if we finish in 32nd place out of 32, I’ll be incredibly disappointed. But to win a preliminary round game in this group is going to be tougher than what we had two years ago. It would require a totally epic upset over Norway or Portugal, which is very unlikely. But our last match of the preliminary round against Brazil—that’s a team we haven’t beaten in a long time, but we’ve played them close a couple of times. If Brazil has an off day and we have a good day, yeah, we’re beating them. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but it’s conceivable.

J.D. Everybody on the squad is realistic they’re a little outmatched against Norway and Portugal, and I would even say Brazil, who is coming into form here recently. They’ll be competitive games, we did play all three of these teams two years ago and we were competitive, but I don’t know that we’ll have enough barring a breakout game to get a win. We’ll get a win in the President’s Cup (note: That’s the official name for the consolation bracket.) I would expect us to play Kuwait and Cape Verde potentially as well, and I think that we might get two wins there. As far as players to keep an eye on, a good friend of mine, Aboubakar Fofana, he plays left back, he’s good for six to seven goals per game. We’ve had great success with our goalkeeping, Pál Merkovszky has come on strong the last few years, and we’re led by our centerback, Ian Hueter.

John: We have a backcourt player named Abou Fofana who plays in the second division French pro league. He’s a tall shooter, about 6’8, and he would have to have a great game, but he did that in our friendly against France. He can be very inconsistent, but if he’s on, and he’s banging in some goals from 9-10 meters, and Brazil has an off day, and they start getting a little nervous… hey, anything can happen.

(Here’s Fofana’s 12-goal performance in that friendly against France.)

Denmark are the defending back-to-back-to-back World Champions. The last time I watched handball, they obliterated Germany in the Olympic gold medal match. Are they your pick to win, even with the retirement of the world’s most recognizable handball guy, Mikkel Hansen?

John: Oh yeah, there’s definitely no team nearly as deep as they are. And Mathias Gidsel has taken over as… I won’t go far to say as he’s done to handball what Steph Curry did to basketball, but he is such a three-dimensional player. He can shoot outside, he’s very good at getting by people 1-on-1 and figuring out a way to get an easier shot off.

J.D.: I filled out my bracket today and my final is Denmark over France. I don’t like that, but I don’t really have any concerns for Denmark in this whole tournament. The rest of the world has leveled out and they’ve stayed at a higher echelon. They are like my Ohio State Buckeyes’ wide receiving room. They are loaded at every single position, there’s depth across the board.

(Note: When I spoke to J.D., he told me the last leg of his journey from Norway back home to Ohio involved a flight that will be in the air during next Monday’s national championship game. I’m hoping he figures out alternate transportation.)

The Americans received a special wild card slot into this tournament to help them prepare for the Olympics. Are they good enough to have qualified on their own merits?

J.D.: Had they not gotten the wild card, they would’ve sent their full roster to the Nor. Ca. championship which they competed in with a kind of B-team. (Note: That’s the tournament that served as a qualifier for the World Champs.) The winner of that tournament was Cuba, and I think they should beat Cuba with their first team, so realistically, they still would’ve qualiifed in their own.

John: I think everybody would agree with me that we’re the best team in our region. Cuba is a little bit behind us. They took the North American slot this past summer because we sent our B-team to the championship. Cuba could beat us on a good day, but we’re a better team than they are.

J.D.: I know there’s frustration from the rest of the world that there are some teams that shouldn’t be getting spots, but the people that complain the most are European countries that already get almost half the spots, so I don’t feel too bad for them.

How do people in the handball world view Team USA?

J.D.: Our best finish was two years ago, when we got 20th place out of 32. I have us forecasted for 28th. It’s the luck of the draw and we got a really tough draw. We’ve got a good squad that’s meshing together. I think the problem leading up to LA 28 is this team has maintained its level but has not moved up to the next level of competition, so we’re still middle-to-lower end of the pack. They’re going to need more firepower and skills to turn some heads.

John: I think we turned a few heads at the last tournament. Nobody sees us knocking off a European power, but the fact that we beat Algeria, we beat Belgium, I think people view the USA as one of the better teams in the also-ran category. We’re good enough that we make the good teams work to beat us. And if you’re a little bit down the pecking order, like let’s say Brazil, and you don’t respect us, we could even rise up and beat you.

What does a successful tournament look like for Team USA?

J.D.: A huge success would be a win in the group phase to make it to the main round. I mean, that would be a monumental success. I think a realistic susccess would be a couple wins in the President’s Cup. That should be the bar we’re trying to achieve.

John: Making the main round, that’s a success. But that’s gonna be tough. Most likely they’re gonna go down to the President’s Cup. I’m hoping to win two matches, maybe three. And I don’t want to get absolutely clobbered in any match. I want to make the power teams we’re going to play work for it, maybe put a little scare into them. Keep the game in the single digits, don’t let the other team pick their score so to speak, that would be a good show for us.

J.D. But the thing we’re really trying to stress is exposure for the game. Any type of splash that we can make to let people know this sport exists is my goal, and that’s what I’m trying to harp on with the players, because they’re all based in Europe and don’t understand the struggles we face here.

You guys are both headed to Norway for the World Championships. What are you looking forward to the most?

J.D.: Seeing the atmosphere that Norway has. Handball is a very, very popular sport there, the arena is going to be packed, so from an atmosphere standpoint, that’ll be great for our USA players. This might be the biggest, most attended games they’ve ever played in.

John: Just the quantity of games I’ll be able to watch for two-and-a-half weeks. It’s a little like March Madness. You’ve got multiple games at once so if one’s a crapper, I’ll watch another one, and you never know who’s gonna be the George Mason or the Gonzaga of old.

J.D. And just getting to be around other people that care about handball is pretty cool.