Barça suffer first defeat, Szeged and the rest narrow the gap
Only the teams from group B were on court at the start of Round 9 in the Machineseeker EHF Champions League. The gap between the top 4 teams is getting smaller. As Barça were defeated for the first time this season, and Szeged took the points at Kolstad, leaders' advantage is now only three points. Aalborg (winners against Kielce) and Nantes (winners at Zagreb) are only one point below Szeged. Magdeburg made a huge leap in the rankings.
That was very important for us after four defeats (in all competitions). I'm very proud of the team, we were down after those defeats, but I can say that we blocked out all the negativity in training and that's why I'm proud of how we played today against the leaders of our group. Proud of the staff, the team and above all the fans - without them a win like this would not be possible.
23 goals are far too few in modern handball. In attack SCM were much better. Especially Gisli caused us problems one-on-one and we didn't defend well there either.
It is hard to say anything after such a game. Of course I'm disappointed. In France we were close for 50 minutes, but then we failed to secure points in the end. Although we worked on improving different things, that happened again today. We've got a lot of problems with the roster at the moment as we're really lacking back players. In the first half they were playing aggressively towards our shooters which opened up space for Patryk (Walczak) today on the line. We looked good on the defensive side of the court, but we were struggling in attack and that simply wasn't enough to secure points today.
We prepared well for Zagreb, we knew that we have to find a way to stop them, deliver on the defensive side of the court, which was going to put us in a great chance to win this one. It wasn't an ideal match for us either, we made some mistakes but overall it was a good performance and I'm happy.
Congratulations to Szeged, they played a strong game today. I am a little bit disappointed today, we did some stupid mistakes, lost the ball in counter attacks. At the same time, we were a bit soft in our defence. Offensively we played a strong match, scored 33 goals which should be enough, but Szeged were stronger. We need to work harder and fight like wolves in the next matches.
I am very proud of the boys. The last game in Hungary when we lost, it hurt a lot! So we had a lot of emotions going into this game. Today we were in front almost the entire match and that is comforting for us.
We played really well today in a fantastic atmosphere with a lot of energy from our players. This morning I could just feel that today would be one of those days, and it was.
Congratulations to Aalborg. They were a 100 per cent better from the beginning to the end. I think in the first seven minutes we lost the game and made no goals. After that it was 53 minutes I cannot explain.
