South Korea's Women's Handball Clashes With Japan in 亞 Championship Final 'Eternal Rivals'
Dec 09, 2024
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The South Korean women's handball team, led by head coach Lee Gye-cheong, will play the final match of the 20th Asian Women's Handball Championship against Japan at 9:30 p.m. on the 10th in New Delhi, India.
It's a chance to avenge. South Korea suffered a crushing 19-29 loss to Japan in the final of the Hangzhou Asian Games in October last year. In the meantime, Korea has shown a better performance than Japan. South Korea also defeated Japan in the final in December 2022, the previous Asian Championship, 34-29 in overtime. He has won six consecutive tournaments. At that time, Korea made a strong performance with Ryu Eun-hee scoring 19 goals, more than half of the team's score. In addition, South Korea defeated Japan 25-24 in the final of the Asian qualifying tournament for the Paris Olympics in August last year, making it to the Olympic finals for the 11th consecutive time.
The tide has changed. Recently, Japan has been chasing fiercely. Japan, which has a wider base than South Korea, has not spared any investment, especially by appointing a European coach ahead of the Tokyo Olympics held in its own country. As a result, he won his first-ever gold medal at the Asian Games last year. Japan ranked 17th and South Korea 22nd at the World Championships last December.
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There is no receding. In particular, South Korea showed stable performance through this tournament. In Group A, they beat Singapore (47 to 5), Kazakhstan (30 to 20), and China (25 to 14) to advance to the semifinals. In the semi-finals, Iran beat Iran 33-20.
The key is the atmosphere at the beginning of the game. South Korea has been sluggish in the early stages of three recent matches against Japan. In the final of the Asian Championship in December 2022, they were pulled to 2-8 in the beginning. In August 2023, the Olympic qualifying tournament was also pushed back to 0-5 after the start of the tournament. In the final of last year's Asian Games, it was pushed to 8-14 in the first half. In this game, the early atmosphere is expected to be more important.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
