Omoregie eyes her maiden EHF FINAL4 after 11 years

Dubbed as a “wonderkid”, a “special player” when she made her debut aged 18 for Krim Mercator Ljubljana back in 2014, Elizabeth Omoregie had her ups and downs since.

“But now I feel excellent, I have been playing at a high level this season, and my role has been getting bigger and bigger in the team,” says the centre back, who has been playing for CSM Bucuresti since 2018.

Omoregie joined the Romanian champions just after CSM's last appearance at the EHF FINAL4, two years after they lifted the trophy in Budapest.

What are Omoregie’s first memories from the EHF Champions League?

“Being from Bulgaria, the culture of handball is not that big. You don’t put the alarm on, hey, on this day, at this hour, there will be a big match, so you can watch it. So I did not know anything about the Champions League back then, the format, the teams playing, nothing,” Omoregie says.

But when she signed for Krim Mercator Ljubljana, that changed. 

“I heard that were some good players. I knew about a Romanian player who was very good, so I remember that when I played against Cristina Neagu for the first time. She was at Buducnost back then and I blocked her, I fouled her. I was like… wow! Now we always smile when we talk about this, as we are teammates for so long here,” Omoregie says.

With so many matches under her belt in the European top competition, for Omoregie it is difficult to pinpoint a lot of memories, but she says that even in the toughest moments, the losses, there is something to learn, more to pick up, ready to toughen up as a character.

“But the nicest memory was when I scored my first goal, when I played my first game. It was something incredible. I was like, here I am, I did it,” says Omoregie, talking about her debut against Hypo Niederösterreich on 17 October 2014, when she was still a teenager.

Since that moment, the Slovenian centre back has amassed 488 goals in the EHF Champions League, with the 103 from the current season by far her highest tally. And it has come after missing a huge chunk of the previous season due to an injury.

However, Omoregie has still not featured in the EHF FINAL4, as CSM have been stopped in the quarter-finals every time since the centre back arrived at the club prior to the 2018/19 season.

Twice they faced Team Esbjerg, their opponents in the same phase this season, and twice they lost against the Danish side. Esbjerg aim for their fourth straight visit to Budapest.

“I am really confident this time. There are a lot of memories against them, we knew we could play against them relatively early in the competition this season, but you know what they say – what is coming to get you, will get you in the end, you cannot avoid it,” Omoregie says with a smile.

She puts CSM’s fantastic streak – a team-record seven matches in a row won until the quarter-finals – due to a good atmosphere in the team, where the players act like one and have a good relationship between each other.

“This time, we are very united. Well, we are colleagues first of all, but many of us have been here for a lot of time. Some of us are good friends,” adds the centre back, who has been seen in the stands with some of her teammates when Dinamo Bucuresti played in the Machineseeker EHF Champions League.

The quarter-final against Esbjerg is also a duel between the top two scorers this season: Esbjerg’s Henny Reistad has already scored 122 times, 19 more than Omoregie — the only players in the competition to score more than 100 goals so far.

The first leg, which is the MOTW, takes place in Bucharest on Sunday (live on EHFTV at 14:00 CEST), the return leg in Denmark next week Sunday. 

Another factor coming into play for CSM is Cristina Neagu’s upcoming retirement at the end of the season.

That makes Omoregie, Emily Arntzen, Crina Pintea, and other players who have shared the court with Neagu for many years at CSM even more motivated to provide the Romanian star the chance to earn her second title in the EHF Champions League, after the one clinched with Buducnost in 2015.

“Of course, that adds an extra layer of motivation for us, because we want her to fulfil her dream," Omoregie says. "But, in the end, the main thing is to win against Esbjerg and give us the chance to fight for the title, because this season has been quite good for us."

photos © 2025 Raluca Malnasi