(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Hosts Qatar, Slovenia and defending champions Spain registered their second successive wins in Group A to inch closer to booking a place in the pre-quarter-finals of the 24th Men's Handball World Championship.
Yesterday at the Lusail Multipurpose Hall, Qatar down by an early goal rallied to script a 27-20 comfortable win over Chile.
The hosts, who won their first match against Brazil, now have two wins from the same number of matches in the six-team group.
For Chile, it was their second defeat in a row, having lost their opening match 36-23 to Slovenia.
Yesterday, Slovenia also maintained a perfect record by defeating Belarus 34-29 to join the hosts and defending champions, as the three teams with a perfect record in the group.
In the other Group A match, the Spaniards were stretched to the limits by neighbours Brazil, but managed to wriggle free from the tight spot with a hard fought 29-27.
For the 2013 winners, it was their second win, having won their first match against Belarus, while Brazil crashed to their second defeat.
Yesterday at Lusail, the South Americans scored an early goal against Qatar to gain an early advantage and managed to hold on to a one-goal lead for the first ten minutes.
Qatar, who rested a few key players to give them rest to recover from injuries ahead of key Group A matches, bounced back to equalise in the 12th minute at three-all.
With the first quarter of the match gone, Qatar gained a strong foothold over the proceedings and there was no looking back as the Valero Riveira boys galloped to increase the lead.
Chile tried practically everything in the defence to stop the marauding Qatar scorers, but none of the formations were really enough to put a stop to attacking combinations.
The hosts took a six-goal lead with them into the dressing room 15-9. They continued from where they left in the second half and the ever-changing defense formations from their opponents did not hamper Qatar's cause as they continued to break open the rival defense at regular intervals to increase the lead Qatar players as Qatar were able to continually increase their lead at 20-10.
In the end, Chile managed to reduce the gap with Qatar booking a seven-goal win.
Right back Zarko Markovic was the top scorer for Qatar with 11 goals, while Marco Oneto hit the net five times for Chile.
The match confirmed that Qatar have a very strong goalkeeping duo. After Danijel Saric performed well against Brazil 28-23 in the opening match of the tournament, his colleague Goran Stojanovic did just as well against Chile.
From the start of the second half, Stojanovic continued his fine performance in the Qatari goal, and he even improved his level at times.
"It is a nice felling that we have won two games out of two. We must play well to win the remaining five games. We shall go step by step and try to win the next game," said goalkeeper Stojanovic, who brought off a number of saves. "For me, this was my first game. I'm satisfied with my performance. I gave away only 20 goals. This is the world championship and I feel that we can always improve. I'm looking forward to next match now," he added.
Qatar coach Riveira was satisfied with the win.
"Obviously I am very content with our second win in the tournament. I was positively surprised by Chile, though. They played very well, particularly after their time-out in the second half.
"We played really well in the first half and our defence was also good. We continued playing well for the first 10 minutes of the second half. After that we slowed down a bit, but as I said, I am happy with our second win."
Qatar left back Ameen Zakkar said: "Fortunately, we scored well again in this match. We had injured players who needed to be replaced, but fortunately, that did not stop us from taking our second victory." Chile coach Fernando Capurro said although they lost it was a much better performance compared to the last match
"Compared to our first match, where we played bad in the second half, my team delivered a good performance for the entire game. We lost 27-20 and that was not so bad.
"We came to this tournament to learn. Our normal competition is in South America, not at the World Championship, but we strive to play better every time."
Chilean centre back Guillermo Araya said playing a host nation before a vociferous crowd is always difficult.
"It will always be difficult against the home team, but we are here to learn, and we realise that we are still pretty far away from the European level."
In the Brazil-Spain clash, after a tough keenly contested first half, the Brazilians managed to turn the game and take the lead in the second half.
From there onwards the battle became very tight. Yet the Spain team managed to keep the composure and remain organised in both attack and defense, winning this very tight game at the very end.
Spain's top scorer was Canellas with nine goals. Joint top scorers for the Brazil team were Felipe Ribeiro and Jose Guilherme Toledo with five goals each.
In the Group B matches, Croatia and Macedonia won their respective matches against Tunisia and Iran. Croatia wining 28-25, and Macedonia overcoming Iran 33-31.
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