Portugal was crowned European wheelchair handball champion on Sunday, beating France 2-1 in the final of the first edition of the European Championship with teams of four.
In Vilnius, Lithuania, the team coached by Danilo Ferreira prevailed with scores of 7-6, 9-10, and 7-0, in a match where João Jerónimo was the top scorer with 14 goals, four more than Fatih Cuhadar, the top scorer for the French team.
Portugal, which has accumulated five wins in as many games, had already defeated France in the third and final round of Group B in the first phase, on Friday, by 2-0, the same result it obtained against Romania and Spain, as well as in the semi-finals, played on Sunday morning, against Croatia.
In the bronze medal match, hosts Lithuania beat Croatia (2-1).
Portugal also qualified for the 2026 World Cup, where they finished seventh in their debut in 2024 in Egypt.
Wheelchair handball is played in a best-of-three format between mixed teams, with two ten-minute halves. In the four-player variant (ACR4), there must be at least one woman on the court the entire time. In the six-player variant (ACR6), Portugal won the 2022 World and European Championships in Leiria, after having already won the gold medal (2018), also as host, and three silver medals (2015, 2016 and 2019) in the main continental competition.
We were true champions, we wanted more.”
The wheelchair handball coach, Danilo Ferreira, praised Portugal’s spirit of sacrifice after their success in the first edition of the European Championship with teams of four.
“We had some nervousness mixed in, and that led to an abnormal level of efficiency in our team. We missed a lot of chances. Now, we managed not to lose our heads or go crazy because things were going badly. We kept fighting, we were real champions, we always wanted it, we wanted more, we fought harder, we played better, we are better,” analyzed Danilo Ferreira, quoted by the Portuguese Handball Federation (FAP).
Captain João Jerónimo admitted that Portugal complicated their task in the final, with “nerves and anxiety getting in the way a bit.” “We managed to win the first set when France thought it was over. In the second, we continued to be quite nervous, with some anxiety wanting to finish, we didn’t make good decisions at the right time and we lost by one point. In the third, with the exclusion of the French captain and the physical exhaustion, it became slightly easier,” he said.