Doha: The International Handball Federation (IHF) has announced the pots and procedures for the draw event of the 24th Men’s Handball World Championship, which will be held here from January 15 to February 1 next year.
The draw will take place at the Ritz Carlton Hotel here on July 20 at 9.30pm and will be conducted by Leon Kalin, Chairman of the IHF Commission for Organising and Competition.
Representatives of all 24 participating teams will attend the draw event, which will be held in the presence of the highest-ranked representatives of the State of Qatar, the Local Organising Committee and the IHF.
The qualified teams for the World Championship were seeded in six pots by the IHF and will be drawn in four groups for the preliminary round.
Host and Asian champions Qatar were seeded in pot 3 together with African champions Algeria and the European teams from Russia and FYR Macedonia.
As the host of the World Championship, Qatar has the prerogative to assign itself to a group of its choice after the remaining pots have been drawn.
Defending world champions Spain are in pot 1 alongside European champions France, European silver medallist Denmark and Croatia, who were fourth at the 2014 European championship.
The playing system for the 2015 World Championship is as follows.
In the preliminary stage, the four groups will play on five match days each. After the completion of this stage, the four best-ranked teams from each group will proceed to the eighth-finals, in which the first ranked teams will face the fourth ranked and the second ranked teams will compete against the third ranked teams. Those teams that finish the preliminary round in positions five and six in their groups will continue to play in the President’s Cup, competing for ranking positions 16 to 24.
The winners of the eighth-finals move to the quarter-finals, which are followed by the
semi-finals and the medal matches.
The winner directly qualifies for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the 2017 World Championship in France. Teams ranked in positions 2-6 book their tickets for the 2016 Olympic Qualification Tournaments.
THE PENINSULA
