Eleven clubs - ten of them from the LIQUI MOLY HBL - are represented by the 16 German World Championship players who won all three preliminary round games and, as group winners, take the optimum of 4:0 points into the main round. Like the German team, Norway also start with 4:0 points, the Netherlands and Serbia take 2:2 points to the next stage, Qatar and Argentina each have 0:4 points in the account.

The largest block in the German roster comes from the Rhein-Neckar Löwen with four players - and all of this quartet played a decisive part in the victories against Qatar (31:27), Serbia (34:33) and Algeria (37:21). With 16 goals, the two Löwen Juri Knorr and Jannik Kohlbacher lead the internal goal scorers list, Knorr is even the overall World Championship in two categories with 20 assists and 36 scorer points (goals and assists).

With 45 World Championship appearances, Löwen right wing Patrick Groetzki is third in the all-time World Championship ranking of Germany, only Christian Schwarzer (51) and Silvio Heinevetter (47) have played more games at World Championships. And Löwen goalkeeper Joel Birlhem fended off 32 percent of all shots, was the match winner against Serbia and made 15 saves, just eight fewer than Andreas Wolff.

The German champions SC Magdeburg - with the third-best scorer Lukas Mertens and Philipp Weber - and SC DHfK Leipzig each have two players in the current German World Championship squad. One player each comes from THW Kiel, SG Flensburg-Handewitt, Bergischer HC, Füchse Berlin, MT Melsungen, HC Erlangen, VfL Gummersbach and, as the only non-HBL club, Lomza Kielce with Andreas Wolff.

Mertens and Weber will face club mates in the two decisive main round games for the quarter-finals: the Dutchman Kay Smits and the captain of the SCM and the Norwegian side, Christian O'Sullivan. Julian Köster locks horns his Gummersbach teammate Tom Jansen from the Netherlands, Leipzig's Simon Ernst and Luca Witzke face their Norwegian goalkeeper Kristian Saeveras, German captain Johannes Golla will face his Norwegian Flensburg teammates Göran Johannesson and Magnus Röd.

The match against Norway will of course be a very special duel for Rune Dahmke - he not only duels with his three teammates Sander Sagosen, Harald Reinkind and Petter Överby - but there is even a real family duel waiting for the left wing: his partner, Stine Oftedal (world champion, European Champion, Champions League Winner, World Handball Player 2021) is the sister of Sander Sagosen's wife Hannah.

And also in terms of the eight participants in the quarter-finals in the German Cup on 4/5 February this main round group is well filled: The two Dutchmen Bobby Schagen and Niels Versteijnen from TBV Lemgo as well as the Qatari Anadin Suljakovic and the Serb Jovica Nikolic from HSG Wetzlar join the mentioned players from Flensburg, Kiel, Magdeburg, Gummersbach and from the Rhein-Neckar Löwen. Their teams also qualified for the next round alongside Germany from preliminary round group E. The eighth quarter-finalist TSV Hannover-Burgdorf is also still represented in the main round of the World Championship with the Montenegrin Branko Vujovic.

The four winners of the quarter-finals SG Flensburg-Handewitt vs HSG Wetzlar, TSV Hannover-Burgdorf vs Rhein-Neckar Löwen, THW Kiel vs SC Magdeburg and VfL Gummersbach vs TBV Lemgo Lippe qualify for the REWE Final4, which is being held for the first time in Cologne, on 15/16. April 2023 in the LANXESS arena. Tickets for the REWE Final4 are available in the LIQUI MOLY HBL ticket shop: rewefinal4.de

Photo: Binder