The path was certainly rockier than expected, but anyone who saw the smile on Julian Köster's face guessed that successes against a nation with 52,000 inhabitants can also have their liberating effect.

The 22-year-old from Gummersbach beamed all over his face on Saturday evening after the German national handball team's 33:27 second leg victory in Tórshavn - for the moment it didn't seem to matter that the selection of the German Handball Federation (DHB) was in the play -off games against which Færøer had not covered in glory.

"We're just happy that we got our ticket to the World Cup," said Köster. "It was incredibly fun to play in front of this packed hall.

We had problems at first, but then got the defense set up the way we wanted and scored easy goals.” The DHB will therefore be there when the next world champions are being sought in Poland and Sweden in January 2023.

Julian Köster is considered to be the up-and-coming man in defense and attack - it was also his fault that his team turned the embarrassing 15:16 half-time deficit and silenced the 1700 enthusiastic fans in the largest hall of the island's capital.

With Köster on top of a 3:2:1 defense, national coach Alfred Gislason's team took the brunt of the courageous Northmen because their famous director Elias Ellefsen now had another way to score.

In the first round, the player from the Swedish team from Sävehof had fooled the hip-rigid Germans and driven them to the brink of despair with his mobility - as did goalkeeper Andreas Wolff, who, unlike in the 34:26 first leg win in Kiel on Wednesday, hardly missed a ball got hold of.

Gislason criticized: "The game got on my nerves because I was extremely upset in the first half.

We made mistakes up front and conceded easy goals from the counter-attack.”

Fair spirit in Tórshavn

Even in the tied game, the underdog from the 18 islands in the Atlantic kept coming up with something to fool the German defense.

The center of defense was the Achilles' heel - many goals fell over the circle.

There, captain Johannes Golla and his neighbor Simon Ernst hardly harmonized.

"Little of what we set out to do worked," said Golla, "but you also have to give compliments to Færøer, who played their game and had their hall behind them."

There was a festival atmosphere in Tórshavn, because after an early deficit and a seemingly hopeless course, the Færøers actually took the half-time lead in the 24th minute thanks to German mistakes in attack and little pressure in the actions of the 12:12.

Gislason didn't seem pissed off, but rather introverted.

Could this be true?

The professionals in the Faroe Islands are by no means beginners, most of them play in the lower teams of the local leagues in Scandinavia, and they are all well trained.

However, Gislason had expected a little more sovereignty and ease from his players.

He got it in the second round.

Now Till Klimpke fended off some shots in goal, the offensive defense found access, although the Færøer tried again in 7:6 without a goalkeeper.

Lukas Mertens on the left wing seemed determined and scored to make it 22:19 in the 38th minute.

When his representative Marcel Schiller ran to 26:20, the faces on the German bench relaxed.

"We were able to substitute and played it through to the end," said Gislason with satisfaction.

And yet it was an important finding for future tasks that his team had to do everything they could to win, even against such a no-name - with a view to the actual opponents in these play-off games, Belarus, it would have been a nice nail-biter to be able to become the 13th participation in a World Cup in a row.

Belarus is much stronger than Færøer, but was disqualified by the World Federation IHF for the well-known reasons.

So the Germans came to two games with a special touch, in a place that hardly anyone knew before, and with the certainty that the favorites at the World Cup are different.