Great games in the sand on day 1 of Nazare 2016

Great games in the sand on day 1 of Nazare 2016

The largest Beach Handball EURO to date has thrown off in the Portuguese town of Nazaré and there was already plenty of action and drama as 32 men's and women's teams vie for the Under-16-title in their respective event.

In the men's event it was in particular Group C with Spain, Romania, Poland and Ukraine that provided a lot of excitement. Each team won one game, meaning that nothing is decided ahead of the last group games tomorrow. Only the top two teams of each group qualify for the quarter-finals.

Some teams, on the other hand, already have the luxury of having reached the knockout stages. In Group B Switzerland and Russia are safely through and so are Germany and Italy in Group D.

In Group A, the final decision will only be made on Saturday. Portugal have the best chances as they have won both their matches. Georgia and Greece have won one match each; Slovakia still wait for their first point.

Crunchtime in the women's groups on Saturday

In the women's event nothing is decided yet as three teams can potentially end up with four points each in all four groups.

Norway have the best position in Group A with two wins from two, but Hungary and Lithuania are trailing with one win each. The same holds true for Portugal (two wins) and Romania and Ukraine (one win each) in Group B, Germany (2), Italy and Poland (1 each) in Group C and Netherlands (2), Spain and Russia (1) in Group D.

Only the final group matches will bring the decision which teams eventually make it to the quarter-finals which will also be played on Saturday.

The semi-finals and the final in both events are scheduled for Sunday.

Comprehensive coverage

Over the three days of the tournament, the EHF offers all beach handball fans plenty of opportunities to follow the event.

All matches of Court 1 and Court 2 will be streamed live on the ehfTV Youtube channel. This coverage will be supplemented by a number of highlight and best of-clips from the event which will also be available on Youtube as well as on the beach handball Facebook page.

All matches can be followed with the dedicated beach handball ticker and the respective statistics are available for all men's and all women's teams on the respective event pages.

Furthermore there will be continious updates on the EHF live Twitter account, the EHF Beach Handball Instagram channel and the EHF's Snapchat account, ehf_live.

Photos: Marcio Menino