Dutch and Croatians beat Spanish teams to ebt ranking top spot

Six teams from Spain each finished in the top 10 of both the men’s and women’s European Beach Handball Rankings – but none of them could end the 2018/19 season top of the pile*.

Instead that honour went to teams from the Netherlands and Croatia, as they denied Spanish teams from finishing in first place in both genders for the second successive season.

Leading the way in the men’s ranking were Croatia’s Detono Zagreb on 2,068 points, finishing seven points clear of Hungarian team Hír-Sat BHC.

Under the coaching of Mladen Parazik, Detono – who topped the ranking back in 2012/13 – won three events over the course of the season, including the the Moscow Grand Slam in early August, the Calise Cup in Italy in June and on home sand at the Jarun Cup in May

In the women’s ranking, top spot belonged to Netherlands outfit Westsite Amsterdam, who saw off the challenge of Spain’s Taberna El Pandura A M Almeria, finishing eight points clear with a total of 2,020 points.

Rianne Mol’s team from the Dutch capital won the II Nazaré Dreams Beach Handball tournament in Portugal in June and finished third at the ebt Finals. Those points were enough to see them return to the top of the rankings where they ended the 2016/17 campaign.

The best teams from the ebt 2019 will compete at next year’s ebt Finals, likely to be held in late May. The ebt Finals are the traditional opening tournament of the beach handball season.

Registration for the ebt Finals in 2020 will start around February to March next year.

*Ranking results take into consideration 64 of 66 tournaments, with the outstanding two events – the Limburg Indoor (27-29 December) and Winter Prague Open (1-2 February 2020), part of the 2020 ebt season.