Analysis of Spatial Offensive Performance in Handball: Differences between Men's and Women's Senior World Championships

The aim of this study was to carry out a descriptive analysis of the main performance variables of national teams that competed in the Men's (Germany-Denmark 2019) and Women's (Germany 2017) senior handball World Cups, and to compare the spatial offensive performance indices of laterality and depth according to the gender of players, considering for this purpose the total number of throws made according to the finishing area. A documentary study was carried out based on the total number of throws made in 192 male and 154 female games of 48 national teams belonging to 33 countries, which participated in previous World Cups. The data were collected from the International Handball Federation (IHF) statistics. The results showed that the areas from which the highest number of shots were taken in both World Cups were the central and shallow areas of the field. Several gender differences were observed. More specifically, male teams made much more attempts from the left side area than female teams (data), who finished from the right side (data). The depth index reflected that, although the dominant execution by gender was from deep offensive zones, men's teams finished more often from the 1st offensive line, while female teams finished from the 2nd offensive line. This information will be useful for coaches in designing training tasks and for players in improving decision making.