The handball team returned to Portugal this Saturday, after reaching fifth place in the European Championship – the best campaign in history – and qualifying directly for the 2027 World Cup. At Humberto Delgado Airport, in Lisbon, the athletes spoke to journalists. Antonio Areia «It is a special moment, of duty fulfilled. We set out to do better than the 2020 European Championship and I think we had a super competent competition, with some ups and downs, I confess. I think it is always possible to do better and we are a group that likes to take on these types of challenges. At the World Cup we faced almost the same teams to try to reach fourth place – Germany, France, Spain and Norway.” Salvador and the epic outcome against Norway «We had the notion that it would end up being a [último] shot and regardless of whether it was a goal or not, the game would be over. Fortunately, Martim often scores in these situations and it happened once again.” Gustavo Capdeville «We were focused on that, it was the last seconds and what we wanted was to score the goal. I'm honest: I didn't listen to the coach, we were so anxious, we wanted to score and win so much.”