A little crazy?

Niklas Landin didn't want to let the usual goalkeeper cliché stand.

"Not me!" he replied on Friday evening after winning the World Championship semifinals.

With his Danes he had just defeated Spain 26:23, he himself had saved Ferran Sole's seven-metre throw shortly before the end, which could have turned this duel into a thriller again, and after a total of 15 saves he was voted player of the match been.

Christian Kamp

sports editor.

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But that one remained a bit of a mystery, even to himself apparently, as he stopped Daniel Dujshebaev's shot on the way to goal.

Landin thought he had been hit in the face somehow, in any case he went wild at Dujshebaev, colleagues from both teams were there immediately, a big tumult, but after looking at the video images, the German referees Schulze/Tönnies decided: There was nothing.

"I was a bit freaked out for a few seconds, well, almost a minute," said Landin, who actually didn't get hit in the face by the ball, but in the upper part of the neck at the base of the neck.

When even a rather quiet representative like Landin loses his temper like that, it shows one thing above all: the pressure the goalkeepers are under in handball.

Because they are often the decisive men.

It must be.

Denmark versus Spain, that was also the duel Landin against Gonzalo Perez de Vargas, the Spanish goalkeeper, and that the Scandinavians are now in the final this Sunday (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the handball world championship and on Eurosport) and for the third time The fact that they were able to win the title one after the other was not least thanks to Landin, the 34-year-old goalkeeper of THW Kiel.

“Our defense was really good”

While the throw rates of the star players were pointing downwards, that of Mikkel Hansen as well as that of Mathias Gidsel, while the Danish dynamite no longer ignited in attack, Landin defused decisive balls at the back.

He passed on the compliments to his colleagues.

"Our defense was really good," he said, with Magnus Saugstrup and Henrik Møllgaard in front of him in the inner block it was "almost perfect".

In view of the French power in the offensive that awaited in the final, this is a reassuring situation for the Danes, who no longer seemed physically up to the mark at the end of this exhausting tournament.

For the semi-finals they had to travel from Sweden to Gdansk, and then they went back again.

The fact that they can now become champions for the third time in a row is also “a lot of pressure”, as Landin said, but the “anticipation for the grand finale” outweighs it.

It will be something of a home game for them in Stockholm.

They are now unbeaten in 27 World Cup games and the number 28 will not fail because of outside support.

And otherwise?

Landin said that despite this aura of invincibility, there are also weaknesses in the Danish team.

Understandably, he didn't want to say where they were.

One thing is certain: not in the gate.