Slovenia would be no pushovers, and Macedonia knew this coming into the match. Slovenia's team was younger, quicker, and it certainly played with lots of heart. But Slovenia doesn't have Lazarov and Ristovski.

The game started very bright for Macedonia, which is something we have said for every match in this year's European Handball Championship.

Kiril Lazarov wrote history when he scored his 5th goal, he broke the all time record of 58 goals in a European championship. He went on to score three more thus increased the record to 61 goals.

Lazarov tied the record in the last second of the first half when Macedonia took a commanding 16-12 lead.

This game meant a lot for the Slovenians as well, Olympic games qualifications were at stake. In the 40th minute the scoreboard showed 21:21. Each team kept scoring goals, with Macedonia finally taking a two goal lead 24-22 with 6 minutes to go.

After the 58th minute (28-26), Macedonia had a player suspended which Slovenia used and scored, making it 28-27. Lazarov didn't score in the next attack which meant Slovenia could tie the score and take the game into over time.

Macedonian fans didn't like to see a repeat of Denmark and Germany, and it certainly looked it was going to happen again. In the dying seconds of the game Zivzelj of Slovenia ended up alone with Ristovski, but the Macedonian goalie somehow read his shot and made the most important save of his life. 

Match over! Macedonian players errupted with joy. 28-27, the final score.

Man of the match was Lazarov. The class act he is, he gave his trophy to the Macedonian goalie.

Interestingly enough, there were only 3,000 Macedonian fans in Belgrade arena, in previous games there were 10,000. The reason is because Serbian fans purchased most of the tickets for their clash against Croatia. Since the Serbia v Croatia match is also in the Belgrade Arena, EHF tickets are not sold per match, rather as packages for all matches in a given day.