Denmark, Germany and Croatia took gold, silver and bronze respectively when the European Handball Championship ended in Herning, Denmark, on Sunday.
By that time, the Swedish national team players had already returned home, despite home-field advantage and a favorable draw in the group stage in Malmö.
14th place in the World Cup last year and sixth place in the European Championship are the results from the two tournaments with Michael Apelgren as head coach.
We obviously have full confidence in Apelgren and the leadership team we have in place now, says Kalle Andersson, who shares the role of national team manager with Jerry Hallbäck during Hanna Fogelström's parental leave.
“Incredibly good leadership team”
What are you most satisfied with?
The national team has shown that it can produce very good performances. But it is important to deliver those performances in more matches and for longer periods. They have an incredibly good leadership group that has very good dialogue with the players. It was a harmonious and strong national team that performed together. I think they are doing a great job.
How do you view the fact that there have still been two failed championships in a row?
This is not a failed championship for the men.
Even the players say that?
"If I take it from the federation's point of view, and zone out a little, we are in the top six in a European Championship with very tough competition and small margins. So it's not a failure, even though we obviously want to play for the medals," says Kalle Andersson.
World Cup in a year
Michael Apelgren has a contract through the 2028 Olympics and leads the national team in close collaboration with Patrik Fahlgren, assistant coach, and Tobias Karlsson, team manager.
The next championship is the World Cup in Germany in January next year.
World Cup 2025: Apelgren, a former assistant coach, replaced Glenn Solberg at short notice. In addition, Sweden suffered injuries to several key players before the World Cup. In the middle round they had a weak showing: they won comfortably against Portugal but lost to both Brazil and Norway. They finished the tournament in 14th place.
Euro 2026: Sweden started strongly with four straight wins and the road to the semi-finals looked open. But everything changed after a heavy loss to Iceland and only a draw with Hungary. Sweden finished third behind Croatia and Iceland in the intermediate round in Malmö and ended the European Championship by losing to Portugal in the match for fifth place.
