Defending champs Qatar take on NZ in Asian handball tourney on Thursday

DOHA, January 18, 2018 -Defending champions Qatar will take on debutant New Zealand in the first match of the 2018 Asian Handball Championship on Thursday.

In all, 14 teams are participating in the tournament which will be held from January 18 to 28 in Suwon, South Korea. Australia, New Zealand and Bangladesh are participating for the first time in the tournament which is a qualifier for the World Cup in Germany and Denmark in 2019.

Al Annabi will be attempting to make it a triple victory after securing back-to-back victories in 2014 and 2016. Qatar's coach Valero Rivera L'f3pez will be counting on his more experienced players including Rashid Youssef, Anis Zouaoui, Abdel Razzaq Mourad, Alaeddine Balrachid, Mostafa Amir, Hossam Ruman, Kamal Al-Din Malash, Hassan Awwad, Mahmoud Hasaballah, Youssef Ben Ali, Djovo Djajnovic, Ahmed Meddi, Firas Mustapha and Daniel Saric, to overcome any resistance from the Kiwis.

Qatar, who are in Group D, have always been the team to beat on the continent in recent years. Five other games are scheduled for Thursday with China going up against Saudi Arabia in the same group as the Al Annabi. Japan will play Uzbekistan in Group A while Australia will slug it out with Bahrain in Group B. Korea face Bangladesh and India will meet the UAE in Group C.

Speaking about the match, Lopez said,"I do not have a lot of information about New Zealand but I'm confident of my team winning our match tomorrow. In general, we are ready, we know the difficulty of the matches in the tournament and we hope be at our best performance and win the game. This is important for us and in all matches of the tournament."

"We are playing three matches in the group stage, the same as Group C. We are lucky to play our match early as this will give us more time to rest so we play two matches and get enough time to rest."

"For us, I hope we will be in the highest level of preparation for the matches and perform well as we are the defending champions and what is most important to us in this tournament is to start the journey well and continue strongly. We respect the aspirations of all the teams in the competition for the championship title while seeking to reach the next world championship in Germany and Denmark." Ahead of the tournament, the 14 participating teams held a technical meeting with the organising committee on Wednesday.

Youssef al Moallem, the administrative manager of the Qatar team, represented Qatar at the event. During this meeting, the lists of the participating teams were adopted and the full system of the tournament was explained. The meeting reviewed the colours of the teams' jerseys, the dates and venues of the matches, the mechanism of entering the lounges and the number of seats allowed to sit on the bench.

Muallem pointed out that Al Annabi players are aware of their responsibility in terms of achieving the goal of reaching the World Cup in Germany and Denmark next year."Defending our title is very important to us and we have confidence in the players and their abilities," he said.

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