Macedonians open with clear victory over Tunisia

Macedonia - Tunisia 33:25 (18:14)

Macedonia opened their World Championship campaign with a clear and relatively easy 33:25 win over Tunisia, as the two teams met in Group B late Friday afternoon at the Lusail Multipurpose Hall. Only for short parts of the match the North Africans were able to put their opponents under a bit of pressure. Aften a fairly equal start, Macedonia took off to a 9:4 lead and a bit later 11:5. Even though Kiril Lazarov missed a penalty shot along the way, the Macedonians remained to be dominant in the game, where four two minute suspensions within the first 20 minutes, including two for key defence player Wissem Hmam, did not make things easier for the Tunisians.

Tunisia managed to benefit from a couple of Macedonian two minute suspensions to reduce the distance to only one goal, but being back at full strength, Macedonia reclaimed control soon, and increased their lead to four goals again before half time, at which point they were leading 18:14. From the start of second half on the Macedonians increased their lead even further, especially as Kiril Larzarov was back in his role as main goal scorer after having taken a bit of a break from that aspect of handball for the last part of the first half. Second half became considerably less high-scoring than the first 30 minutes had been, particularly due to an increasing number of mistakes on both sides. Still Macedonia managed to stay in control, they never let their opponents get any closer than four goals. In the last 10 minutes Macedonia more or less outran and outplayed the Tunisians and increased their lead to 10 goals, before Tunisia managed to put a small amount of cosmetic on the result by scoring the last two goals of the match. Like so many times before, Macedonia had their most scoring player in Kiril Lazarov. This time the 34-year-old right back from FC Barcelona scored ten goals, while line player Issam Tej became top scorer for Tunisia with six goals.