• Chronicle Spain crashes against Denmark and will fight for bronze

A big, very big man is broken, he won't stop crying, and when he stops talking or, at least, he tries: "I have remembered all the moments I have lived with this group and ... I think this team deserved to play a Olympic final and ... We have tried everything and ... They have been superior, but we have made a great effort to try to draw ... ".

Gideón Guardiola

was this Thursday the image of a veteran Spain that, one step away from the best possible farewell, a final in the Olympic Games, was defeated (23-27). Denmark was superior in the semifinals, the pivot admitted between sobs and unfinished sentences, but the anger at losing the opportunity to retire with a gold was too intense.

All the players of the national team paraded after the game through the mixed zone of the Yoyogi Stadium with contained tears, as did captain

Raúl Entrerríos

, more touched than ever, but none was as bad as Guardiola.

World champion and double champion of Europe with Spain, champion of the Bundesliga and the German Cup with the German Rhein-Neckar, his dream, as he admitted, was to leave handball hugging his friends after the final in Tokyo and never a defeat It had hurt so much.

"I have lost leagues, I have lost tournaments, I have missed goals, I have been wrong a thousand times in this sport and I have never been like that, but this group deserved a little more. Likewise, the mourning only lasts night, I have to leave here with a medal, "he proclaimed and still needed to stop to compose himself.

The empty goal error

Just at the end of the match, Guardiola, an aggressive defender and also a piece of bread, broke in the middle of the court and their teammates had work to take him to the bench and sit him down.

They all went there to try to cheer him on, and even half the Danish team and the rival coach,

Nikolaj Jacobsen

, who was his coach in Germany, went through there.

"It is a pleasure to compete against such good people," he commented and they will surely say the same about him. As he admitted, he regretted one of the party's actions, although he did not cry just for that. In the second half, when Spain approached, only one goal down, Guardiola received a ball on the counterattack and as the rival goal was empty he shot on goal. Failure. He failed by handing the ball over to the Danish defense and then there were only a couple more chances for the equalizer. "It was not only because of that mistake. We all failed and we all got it right. It was because of everything," admitted who at the same time analyzed: the key was not to make a mistake there, the key was to reach the end of the game with so much to overcome.

Because in the first part Spain was not Spain.

Before the Danish defense, after all the current Olympic and world champion, she ran out of ideas beyond looking for

Adrià Figueras

at the pivot and came to rest far behind.

He tried everything afterwards, but it couldn't be anymore.

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