The Women's World Handball Championship is now entering the race for the last four. The tournament being held in Sweden, Norway and Denmark has seen Senegal achieve the greatest feat in the history of its handball. For their 2nd participation, the Lionesses reached the main round.Senegal's performance kept a large part of the country on its toes, inspiring both pride and enthusiasm for the future.
A milestone reached for the small Senegalese sphere
It's still a long way from the frenzy of soccer or basketball, but handball is arousing more and more interest among the Senegalese public. The success of the Lionesses of the small sphere has been closely followed in the land of Teranga. Just a few days before the tournament kicked off, Senegal's national television organized a sports program to debate the women's team's chances in the tournament. Most of the local media devoted a great deal of coverage before and after Senegal's matches. On social networks, you could sense an unusual interest among Senegalese in the exploits of their national women's handball team.
Administrator of the Thiès women's handball development center, Daba Sané maintains that she was expecting such a result, if not better. "I'm one of those people who believe that the Senegalese team should be ambitious in any competition it enters. So I'm not surprised to have qualified for the main round. But we thank God that the girls have taken us to this level never before reached in the history of Senegalese handball. Our generation had never been to the World Cup before. It's a real step forward to reach the main round in 2023," the former Senegalese handball international told Sport News Africa.
Tidiane Ndiaye, a leading expert on Senegalese handball for the sports daily Stades, underlines the team's progress and maturity."It's a historic achievement that Senegal can be proud of. This rejuvenated team has shown that it has what it takes to compete with the big names on the international stage. Successfully holding a major handball nation like Croatia at bay, or upsetting Sweden, a potential candidate for the last four, are just some of the ways in which the Senegalese team has progressed in such a short space of time under Yacine Messaoudi's guidance", he analyzed.
A resilient group
Lodged in a tough Group A alongside Sweden, Croatia and China, the Lionesses immediately set the tone.Coach Yacine Messaoudi's girls created a sensation in their opening match against Croatia, holding off the Croatians who were overwhelming favourites for the match (22-22). The performance of the team led by the emblematic Doungou Camara and her 10 goals created a collective stir among Senegalese fans. Despite losing 18-26 to the Swedish ogre, the heroic Senegalese went on to dominate China in their final group match. In doing so, they confirmed their qualification for the main round.However, Senegal were without two key players: Dounia Abdourahim and Gnonsiane Niombla, world champion with France in 2017.
The IHF (International Handball Federation) informed the Senegalese delegation that these two naturalized players would not qualify."History has repeated itself with the non-qualification of Dounia and Gnonsiane. This was the case in 2016 at the AFCON with Doungou Camara. That deprived us of the final," recalls Daba Sané. It's a big loss because these are two players who would have made a huge contribution to the group. I hope that the Federation's administrative staff will learn from this repeated situation and that these two players will be in the squad for the next African Cup of Nations.
A hard blow on which the Senéga group has built a fighting character. "When you see the girls at work, you can see that they've got a lot of skill, that they've become much more demanding of themselves.Their mental strength and fighting spirit enabled them to achieve the objective set for them by the federation, with this historic qualification for the main round.With two wins against China and Cameroon, a draw against Croatia and three defeats against Sweden, Montenegro and Hungary, Senegal have every reason to be proud of their performance at the World Championship", admitted Tidiane Ndiaye.
Performances to prepare for the future
In a competition as tough as the World Championship, Senegal came up against its own limitations. Despite a 15-strong squad, the Lionesses played with barely a dozen players."Rotation has been the real problem for this team. We have a panel of former internationals where we analyze each of the team's matches. We all saw that the rotations were inadequate, and that's not just true of this world championship. This was already the case at the 2022 African Cup of Nations in Dakar," laments Daba Sané. We wondered why the team was down to just 9 players when there were some pretty good players on the bench.An international player, you have to be able to count on her", she insisted.
"The absence of these two key players distorted coach Yacine Messaoudi's plans. Gnonsiane and Dounia could bring added value to this team.During the last training camp before the World Cup, we saw that they were at the heart of the team.I think their absence is not unrelated to the rotation problem the team suffered from," suggests Tidiane Ndiaye. The strategy was to catch one of the group leaders and beat China. The Lionesses really believed in it, and they did it. Forcing Croatia to a draw was an achievement, but beating China was clearly a legitimate ambition. So the big sensation was the draw against the Croatians," adds the journalist.
Eliminated in the semi-finals of the last Women's Handball Championship, Senegal will have to learn the lessons of this World Cup if they hope to dethrone the "untouchable" Angolans in 2024. According to Daba Sané, managing physical freshness is an important factor. "In this World Championship, we saw players like Doungou (Camara) and Soukeyna (Sagna) exhausted. They were physically at the end of their tether, even though there was plenty of material on the bench. I hope Coach Yacine can put things right for the next few matches," hopes the former Senegalese international.
