The Athlete of the Week
Handballer Daniel Stanciuc
Lăcrămioara Simion, 13.05.2025, 13:45
The Romanian men’s handball team qualified on Sunday for the European Championship scheduled for next year in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It was the Romanian handballer’s second consecutive qualification for the final tournament of the continental competition, after the one in 2024, which occurred after a 28-year break. The last two games of the qualifiers took place last week. On Thursday, Romania defeated Portugal in Constanta, score 28 to 24, and on Sunday it lost dramatically, away from home, to Poland, score 29 to 30. The most efficient Romanian player was Daniel Stanciuc, who scored 13 goals with Portugal and 10 against Poland, and Radio Romania International has designated him the Athlete of the Week.
In the European qualifiers, Romania was part of Group 8. It had a difficult start, with defeats in November of last year: 30 to 37 away from home to Portugal and 27 to 28 against Poland, in Buzău. Two games with Israel followed in March. The first, held in Serbia, in Kraljevo, ended in a draw, 29 to 29, then the Romanians prevailed, in Mioveni, score 29 to 26. The games that decided the qualification were those of last week, after which the Romanians took 3rd place in the group, after the Portuguese and the Poles. In the aforementioned games, Daniel Stanciuc scored 23 goals out of the 57 scored by the Romanian team.
The young Romanian handball player was born on March 6, 2004, in Suceava. He trained as a player at the local team, CSU Suceava, where he made his debut in senior competitions at only 16 years old. He quickly became captain of the Romanian National Youth Team, then was called up to the first representative team under the mandate of Spanish coach Xavi Pascual, in the qualifiers for EURO 2024. In the final tournament, he scored seven goals for the Romanian national team: four against Austria, one against Spain and two against Croatia. He is registered at Dinamo Bucharest, for which he scored eight goals in the 2024 – 2025 edition of the Champions League. (LS)
