Barça, Berlin and Sporting make it to the main round
After round 4 of the group stage in the EHF Champions League Men was completed, a total of seven teams had already booked their main round tickets. Three more – Barça, Berlin and Sporting – followed after winning their respective matches on Thursday. Also, Aarhus remain the big surprise, beating Montpellier for the second time.
We have to be proud of what we did today. Obviously, we wanted to win, but we couldn’t because we made mistakes that we cannot afford to make against teams at this level. Nevertheless, we showed that we can go toe-to-toe with any team. I’m very pleased with the performance we put in today and, despite the defeat, there are plenty of positives to take away from this game.
We just tried to play our game. We had two very different periods in the first half. In the first 15 minutes, we defended well but didn't get the saves we wanted and made too many technical mistakes. Then we improved in attack, but our defensive level dropped. In the second half, I think we were mostly good, but we were still missing those last 10%, which made the game tight in the end. Luckily, Palicka made some important saves. Overall, we made too many technical mistakes and struggled defensively against Porto's players. But credit to Porto for bringing their skills into the game.
A good performance in attack, with a lot of GOG players stepping up. I also think Frederik Møller had a really good game in goal.
It was a difficult day for us. We struggled defensively for almost the entire game. We scored 30 goals, but conceded too many, and that wasn’t enough today.
I am very happy, but first let me talk about the importance of our fans: they were crucial for us. I think that it was a team victory. André [Kristensen] was very good, but on the scoresheet everyone helped, and everyone who came on from the bench also gave something else. To qualify for the main round was a big goal for us.
I think that we fought till the end, but unfortunately there were some mistakes in attack and also in defence, which caused some easy goals. I am disappointed, but we need to move on, as we will have an important game against GOG next week.
Yes, indeed, they are the best in the world, and it was an honor to play against them and, at times, even give them a few problems. It was very difficult for us to play with only one pivot because, unfortunately, our attack didn’t work as well as we had hoped today. Scoring just 22 goals is far too little. However, we must also acknowledge that we were up against world-class players.
I think it was a really important game for us, especially defensively. We made things very difficult for them in attack because our defense was outstanding. After that, things became easier for us, no? Unfortunately, they had two or three injured players who are important to their rotation. But these were two really important points for us.
