Adzic hails Montenegro heroics

Jeff Gross / Getty Images

Montenegro made the handball world sit up and take notice when they dumped favourites France out of the women's handball quarter-finals on Tuesday night.

Furthermore, he feels their reward is a semi-final clash with Spain in the Basketball Arena on Thursday.
With the winner going through to Saturday's gold medal match and the loser contesting the bronze, the manner of Montenegro's win over France, where Katarina Bulatovic scored the decisive goal with the last throw of the game under incredible pressure, will stand them in good stead.
And coach Dragan Adzic has hailed his side's achievement of reaching the last four on their Olympic debut.
"It was simply a phenomenal success for us. I'm still getting a grip with what happened. We just kicked the main candidate for the gold out of the competition," he said after the France game.
"The whole Olympic competition is an amazing school for us as we are still learning being a part of major sporting events."
Spain have been in good form and saw off Croatia in their quarter-final as they chase a medal for the first time, but that is not entering the mind of coach Jorge Duenas.
"If we win the next match then we have won a medal. But we are not thinking about that, we are only focusing on the semi-final."
Norway's defence of the gold medal they won in Beijing four years ago has been rocky in London 2012, scraping through their preliminary stage, and it looked as if they may be heading out of the tournament when they trailed Brazil by five goals in the second half of their quarter-final.
But a superb second-half showing earned them a place in the last four where they now meet South Korea full of confidence.
However, the Asians will be no pushovers as they have surprised many in the competition so far. They finished second in Group B behind France and then saw off a vastly physically superior Russia in the quarter-finals.
And coach Kang Jae Won knows their clash with Norway will hang in the balance.
"We mix tactics from Europe with our Korean tactics and make it our own," he said. "We use a lot of footwork which is quite important for us to do against European teams.
"We can't say at the moment who will win. Norway is always strong in the final rounds. Like in their quarter-final, they did very well in the last five minutes. We know their strength and will target that."