A last-gasp-finish from France’s Luca Karabatic with less than a second left of the quarterfinal in the Handball World Cup against Egypt gave “Les Bleus” an emphatic 34-33 win and thereby a ticket to the semifinal.
At the very last second, 36-year-old Luka Karabatic sent France into the World Cup semi-finals on Tuesday evening, as Egypt were defeated 34-33.
A few seconds before, Egypt’s Yahia Omar thought he had ensured the match would go into extra time with his equaliser, but the aging Karabatic wanted it differently.
The 36-year-old winger was quick to react after the equaliser, sprinted to the center line and sent the ball into an empty Egyptian goal just 0,10 second before the match was finished.
The referees then had to review the final goal on video, and the images showed that the ball had just crossed the goal line before time expired.
Guillaume Gille’s France thereby recorded their seventh victory at the World Cup and now find themselves once again in the last four of a major championship, going for yet another medal.
France began the game brightly but after finding themselves 4-1 down after six minutes, Egypt eventually got their gameeplan going, and after equalising to 5-5, the two sides continued to trade blows throughout the half until five minutes from the end when France really recaptured their momentum and took a four-goal lead at half-time.
France stretched their lead to five goals early in the second half but Egypt fought back, forcing France to redesign their tactics with a seven-on-six attack used throughout most of the second half.
As Hesham levelled the score to 32-32 from long distance with just over a minute remaining, it didn’t take long for Nedim Remili to give the lead back to France with 30 seconds remaining.
Yahia Omar then struck three seconds from the end but French goakeeper Desbonnet quickly gathered the ball which had bulged his goal net, threw it to Karabatic for the restart and his bullet strike was enough to give France the ticket for the semifinal against Croatia on Thursday.
