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“These European Championships for
Younger Age Categories serve a very
important purpose for the up and
coming generations. The EHF regards
this as one of its core missions. With
the tournaments, we have created
a rhythm that allows a young player
to play close to 100 international
matches before moving on to the
senior men’s or women’s competitions.
For young players, these
tournaments and events thus already
become a way of life”
EHF Secretary General Michael Wiederer (2016)
players that later were to rise to celebrity
status in their sport. One of them was the
young German goalkeeper, the first goalkeeper
to be named World Player of the
Year in 2004: Henning Fritz.
That these youth tournaments served as
handball’s school of life not only for players,
but also for referees and functionaries,
is clearly illustrated by 1992 appointments.
Serving as EHF representatives in
Hungary were Jozef Ambrus (SVK) and Jan
Tuik (NED), in Switzerland Karl Güntzel
(SUI) and Manfred Prause (GER) – four people
that were to mark the initial years of the
development of the EHF organisation. The
qualification for the Men’s Youth European
Championship saw the German referee
pairing Bülow/Lübker, who went on to officiate
in the WCh finals in Cairo in 1999.
The final round in Winterthur was conducted
by the Swedish referees Hansson/Olsson,
who twelve years later were to meet
goalkeeper Henning Fritz in the Olympic
final of Athens.
The EHF‘s YAC tournaments were supplemented
in 1994 by the first-time staging
of the Women’s and Men’s Junior European
Championships, which have since been
played every two years, and Youth European
Championships staged in odd years
since1997. In the years 2004 and 2005,
respectively, the tournaments were renamed.
Since 2004, the Men’s 18 and
20 European Championships (men aged
up to 18 and 20, respectively) have been
played in even years and, since 2005, the
Women’s 17 and 19 European Championships
(women aged up to 17 and
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