World Cup (men's handball)

The World Cup is a handball tournament for men's national teams that has been held in Sweden since 1971 . It initially took place irregularly (1971, 1974 and 1979). Since 1984, with one exception (1999 instead of 1998 and 2000), it has been held every two years, alternating with the Supercup tournament in Germany. In 2008 the competition was canceled.

In autumn 2006 the games of one of the two preliminary round groups (with Germany, Croatia, Serbia and Denmark) were played in Bremen and Hanover for the first time . As usual, the other group and final matches took place in Swedish cities.

The Norwegian oil company Statoil has sponsored it since 2004 , and the cup competition has been called the Statoil World Cup since then .

Competition mode

The number of participants in 2006 was eight teams. "Everyone played against everyone" in two preliminary round groups. Then there were crossover semi-finals between the first two in each group, as well as crossover placement matches between the last two in each group. The semi-finalists played places 1 to 4 in the big and small finals, the other placed places 5 to 8 in the same way.

winner

year	1st place	place 2	place 3
1971	Yugoslavia	Romania	Soviet Union
1974	Yugoslavia	Poland	GDR
1979	Soviet Union	Poland	GDR
1984	Soviet Union	Denmark	Yugoslavia
1988	GDR	BR Germany	Sweden
1992	Sweden	Yugoslavia	Spain
1996	Sweden	Russia	France
1999	Germany	Russia	Sweden
2002	France	Denmark	Germany
2004	Sweden	Denmark	France
2006	Croatia	Tunisia	Sweden
2008	not carried out
2010	Denmark	Sweden	Iceland

Medal table

rank	country	gold	silver	bronze
1	Sweden	3	1	3
2	Yugoslavia	2	1	1
3	Soviet Union	2	0	1
4th	Denmark	1	3	0
5	Germany ( DHB )	1	1	1
6th	France	1	0	2
6th	GDR	1	0	2
8th	Croatia	1	0	0
9	Poland	0	2	0
9	Russia	0	2	0
11	Romania	0	1	0
11	Tunisia	0	1	0
13	Iceland	0	0	1
13	Spain	0	0	1

swell

• Report on the 2006 event in the archive of THW Kiel
• All medal winners on www.the-sports.org