By Peter Bang Overby

43-39 was the final result of the match between Hungary and Yugoslavia for the fifth place. The two teams scored no less than 82 goals. Never before has any team scored this many goals in the final round at a European championship. There have been 4 European championship final rounds before this one in Denmark. 10 minutes into the match, it became obvious to the spectators that Hungary and Yugoslavia were about to make history. At that point the teams had already scored 14 goals. The first half ended with the score 24-20 in Hungary's favour, a score which resembled the final score of an ordinary match.

Usually a team scores about 20 goals in a match. It is unusual for teams to score 30 goals or more. But in today's match both Hungary and Yugoslavia scored more than 30 goals. Hungary even scored more than 40 goals, which hardly ever happens. Yugoslavia followed in Hungary's footsteps and scored 39 goals in this absolutely crazy match.

A handball match lasts for 18 minutes, doesn't it?

The old record for the total number of goals scored in a match in a European championship only lasted two years. As a matter of fact the old record included Yugoslavia too. 77 goals were scored in the match for 7th place when Yugoslavia won over Macedonia 39-38 at the European championship in Romania. The match for the 5th place at the championship in Romania between Hungary and Yugoslavia was very similar to today's match. Here the score was also very high 33-33. Apparently, Yugoslavia is very good at scoring goals and also at letting goals be scored against them.

This cannot be said about Austria, at least not during the European championship in Germany in 1994. Here Austria played a match against Croatia which ended 13-14. But it got even worse, when Austria met Norway later on in the championship. The match ended 11-14 in Norway's favour. 25 goals in one match speak for themselves. The lowest number of goals scored in a European championship final round ever.

Admittedly, the match between Hungary and Yugoslavia is not the best match to judge by, however, the two teams only needed 18 minutes to score 25 goals in total. Norway and Austria spent 3 times as much time on scoring the same amount of goals.