Cairo (AFP)

Sweden, which has many absent from the World Handball Championship, cooled the ardor of Egypt, the host country, on Monday during the third day of the first round (24-23), a success which allows it to start the main round with 4 points and therefore to go to the quarter-finals.

Linus Persson's team (8 goals) recovered from a delay of 4 goals at the start of the second period (10-14) to beat the Egyptians at the post.

A precious victory in the perspective of the quarter-finals since Sweden started the main round with the maximum number of points (4), acquired against the other qualified teams and kept.

In group IV which merges groups G and H, the Swedes start in the lead (4 points) ahead of the surprising Russians (3).

The latter, who have benefited from an invitation, play with the logo of their federation after the exclusion of Russia from major international competitions.

With 2 points, Egypt and Slovenia, which made up for it against Belarus (29-25) for its failure against Russia, are still in the game but no longer have the right to make mistakes.

Belarus (1 point) and Macedonia, the last to qualify for this part of the table after their victory over Chile (32-29), are in bad shape.

The top two from each group will go to the quarter-finals.

In Group III which opens, Portugal and France start with plenty of points (4) after their clear round in the first round.

But if the Portuguese dominated Algeria (26-19), France struggled to the end against Switzerland (24-23).

Their two main rivals for the quarterfinals will be, as expected, Iceland and Norway (2 points), who respectively eliminated Morocco (31-23) and Austria (38-29) and start with 2 points.

Algeria and Switzerland (0 point) have already largely mortgaged their chances.

Tuesday, the first round will know its verdict with in particular 3 tickets still to be issued in Pool B, the most homogeneous and tight, between Spain, Poland, Brazil and Tunisia.

© 2021 AFP