The thing I don't like about team France in handball is that they really are scrubs under all their "titles" and "prowess" and shit. Because I've seen how the refs treat them. It's ridiculous.
They weren't even favorites in world handball before the 2009 world cup. Which they won to Croatia 24-19.
24-19.
It's the only game I can remember where Croatia has been held to under 20 goals. And they've played goalie powerhouse Serbia multiple times. (Seriously, serbian keepers are brutal. I don't know how they train but they can stop everything and then some. Spain got hold of one for the national team and everything). Hell, even in the 2005 Finals, when they lost to Spain against all odds, they scored 34. Croatia gives 30 pieces on the regular.
On that same championship, there was a France - Croatia match before the finals, and it was 22-19 Croatia.
Yet on that particular Final, they only scored 19. And were tit-for-tat up to 17 all.
Right.
Sure.
Fucking frenchies.
The rant under the spoiler comes because I've just seen some of the poorest refereeing of all time, in a game where France had the game literally given to them by way of just not calling what should be called when dudes in white jerseys did it. There were elbows to faces that were played off, fouls that weren't called but got a Swedish guy out, 4 penalty shots in 10 minutes (9 in the entire game), 10 minutes of absolute ref blockout to Sweden... Just horrible. The only thing they called in favor of Sweden those 10 minutes was
a chokeslam.I'm dead serious. A french dude went for the chokeslam on a Swedish dude.
And it's been like that since World Cup 2009. They even went 3 years without losing a single match after that, and I can say that my town team could do that as well with the ref work they were given.
The worst part is that they're always praised as if they were amazing by everyone, because they do have a nice record and a bunch of titles, but every single game the commentators leave like "But they were given the game tho. What a piss poor ref work". It's constant. And I hate that.
Seriously, if 9/27 of your goals are penalty shots with no player penalty assigned to them you're not a world class team. You're a bunch of spoiled brats who are given games on the cheap.