Nowadays handball represents one of the most popular sports all over the world. Handball as it is played these days has its origin in northern Europe in the late 19th century. At that time handball emerged as the successor to many other popular games such as raffball and Königsbergerball. Furthermore, it can be said that handball is one of humanity’s oldest games. A variety of historians also believe that handball predates soccer. This opinion consists in the fact that humans have always been better in working and operating with their hands than with their feet.
These days, handball represents an increasingly popular sport which is also part of the Olympic Games and many other important as well as famous international tournaments. Although handball has its origin in northern Europe, this special sport succeeded in migrating from its homeland to a wide range of different parts of the whole world. Of course we are talking about different parts of the world where handball once was unknown. Strictly speaking handball has made outstanding and regardful gains in whole Asia. A remarkable example for this is the Koreans’ Olympic success when both women and men succeeded in medaling at the Seoul Games in 1988. Strictly speaking they took the gold as well as the silver medal.
Handball enthusiasts have faced no difficulty in making their sport popular in lots of different countries all over the world – with the exception of the United States of America. Till this day handball represents a so-called ‘curiosity’ in the United States. The reason for this consists in the fact that in the Americas handball gets often confused with another sport which has the same name and turns out to be one of the most popular sports in whole US.
The general sport handball in Europe is organized within the European Handball Federation (EHF) which, in turn, represents a continental association of the International Handball Federation (IHF). Rules as well as international agreements in most cases are going to be decided by the supreme authority.
Outside Europe handball turns out to be less popular. Nevertheless there are a few non-European countries in which handball as an official sport enjoys great popularity. Some of these countries are for instance Tunisia, Egypt, South Korea, Japan, Katar, Argentina and Brazil. In spite of all it has to be taken into consideration that handball is not popular in every single European country. In the British Isles, for example, handball is almost unknown. This fact does also apply to the Low Countries where handball also plays a minor role. In addition to the professional leagues in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, handball is primarily played in countries such as Spain, France, the Central and Eastern European countries, the successor states of Yugoslavia and in Northern Europe (Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway).
