Twenty-one years of waiting ended in a near-empty hall in Cluj-Napoca on Sunday lunchtime. Israel's under-20 handball team beat Croatia 36:31 in the 15th-place match of the M20 EHF EURO in Romania, claiming the final ranking position that carries qualification for the age group's World Championship. According to Hebrew-language coverage, it is the first time the side known domestically as the reserve national team has reached the tournament since 2005, with the finals now awaiting in North Macedonia in the summer of 2027.
It was done the hard way. Israel trailed 14:17 at the interval, a scoreline confirmed by the official match record, against opponents from one of Europe's genuine handball powers. What followed was the best half of Israel's tournament: a 22:14 surge after the break turned a three-goal deficit into a five-goal victory, completed barely 48 hours after the same squad had been dismantled 35:23 by Iceland.
The comeback was driven by two players in relentless scoring form. Guy Ran Arman, listed on the official match sheet under the surname Resch Erman, struck 11 goals, and Loïc Bakasu Bibange added ten, the pair accounting for 21 of Israel's 36. Yonatan Pelach contributed five, Adi Cohen four, Asaf Sharon and Ben Gross two apiece, and Uri Cohen and Itamar Goldstein one each.
Behind them, the goalkeeping load was shared. Hebrew-language reports credit Alon Rossabi with six saves at a 33 per cent stop rate, Yehonatan Benshitrit with four, and Eitan Elbaz with three. The win owed nothing to the seven-metre line: the official sheet shows Croatia converted seven of eight penalties while Israel scored just one from two, meaning the 36 goals were built almost entirely from open play. Croatia's Moslavac finished with ten at the other end but found too little support once the second half turned.
The route to this decider was unforgiving. Israel arrived off the back of Friday's heavy defeat to Iceland, fielding a squad the Hebrew coverage had described as shorn of four players, while Croatia dropped into the tie after losing their placement meeting with the host nation. On paper it was a mismatch of pedigrees; on the court, Israel's response after the interval settled it emphatically.
The setting gave little hint of the occasion. The official record logs a 12:00 throw-off at the Horia Demian hall in Cluj-Napoca in front of just 60 spectators, a modest stage for the most consequential result an Israeli age-grade handball team has produced in more than two decades.
The wider arc makes the achievement sweeter still. This tournament brought heavy defeats to Sweden, Romania, Czechia and Iceland around wins over Bosnia and Herzegovina and Poland, and after the Iceland loss the campaign had come down to a single winner-takes-all fixture. The players delivered when only victory would do, and a generation that has spent a fortnight absorbing hard lessons in Romania will now test itself against the world's best junior sides next summer.
