Iceland will come up against Russia on the first day of play in the 23rd IHF World Championship in Handball in Spain on Saturday.

The crowd at a previous Iceland handball match. Photo: Geir Ólafsson/Iceland Review.

Iceland and Russia are in Group B in the preliminary round along with Chile, Denmark, Macedonia and Qatar.

The World Championship runs from January 11 to 27. The competition will take place at four locations, Granollers, Sevilla, Madrid and Zaragoza.

Twenty-four countries are competing in this year’s championship: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Brazil, Croatia, Egypt, France, Hungary, Montenegro, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain and Tunisia, as well as those in Group B listed above.

Iceland lost 31-29 against Sweden in a friendly yesterday, the last exercise game before the World Championship and Iceland’s first game under the lead of new coach Aron Kristjánsson. The Iceland-Russia game starts at 6 pm CET on Saturday.

At the last World Championships in 2011, Iceland placed sixth. France, Denmark and Spain took the top three spots respectively, followed by Sweden in fourth and Croatia in fifth.

Click here to read about Iceland in the EHF EURO 2014 Qualifying Phase 2 last year and here to read about the performance of Iceland’s women handball team in the recent European Championship.

ZR