- Title: TUNISIA: HANDBALL - Arab teams seek to impress at Youth Handball Tournament
- Date: 22nd July 2009
- Summary: TUNISIAN TEAM POSING FOR GROUP PICTURE ALGERIAN TEAM POSING FOR GROUP PICTURE (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL HANDBALL FEDERATION, HASSAN MUSTAPHA, SAYING: "This is a new tournament -- this is the third time it has been held, so it's about 6-years-old. This is a tournament which I initiated myself, I adopted this tournament myself because the European
- Embargoed: 6th August 2009 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Tunisia
- Country: Tunisia
- Topics: Sports
- Reuters ID: LVAAKCOA60DUB3CDOAVQ4IUQ4WGF
- Story Text: The 3rd Youth World Championship started in the Tunisian capital on Monday (July 20) with participation from 20 international teams.
Tunis had hosted the Men's World Championships in 2005.
The teams have been divided into four groups, each featuring five teams, who will be battling it out for the title until the tournament's closing on July 31.
Each of the top two teams in every group will move onto the second stage of the tournament.
Seven Arab teams hope to make it past the group stages and progress to the final. Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Qatar and Tunisia are all taking part, as well as Iran.
The tournament's previous two winners in 2005 and 2007 were Denmark and Serbia respectively.
Hassan Mustapha, the President of the International Handball Federation, was happy at the turn-out of teams for this tournament.
"This is a new tournament -- this is the third time it has been held, so it's about 6-years-old," Mustapha said.
"This is a tournament which I initiated myself, I adopted this tournament myself because the Europeans had this tournament and they were ahead of us. They were way ahead of us because they started way ahead of all the other continents, so they were about three years ahead, so I was keen to organise this tournament. We started this tournament with 10 teams then we increased it to 16 teams and today 20 and God Willing, we will have 24 by the next championship."
On Monday, eight different matches were played.
In El-Manzah Sports Arena, Norway beat Egypt 36-31, in Group A.
"Our main goal at this stage is to think of every match in and of itself," said Egypt's team manager, Ahmed Ehab.
"We are not looking too far into the future because we are on the pitch and if we think too far of the future we won't achieve the goals we want at this stage," he added.
Meanwhile the other Group A match saw Qatar thrash Morocco 41-15, while Iceland beat Puerto Rico 35-23 and France beat Brazil 33-26 in Group B.
Despite a tie at half time in Group C, Iran slipped away with a narrow 37-32 victory against Kuwait.
In the Hammamet Arena, the host country pumped-up their performance against Algeria to walk away 26-14.
"We knew the first match would be challenging for us and we told the players, in the end, winning is what's important," said Thabit Mahfouz, assistant manager for the Tunisian team.
"The first half was really difficult for us but in the second half we knew how to take matters under control and the players were free psychologically, so the score was in our advantage in the end," he added.
In Group D, Croatia beat Spain 24-20 and Libya beat Venezuela 38-29.
The tournament continues until July 31. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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