Magdeburg, Aalborg and Paris in main round; four clubs out
The return legs of the EHF Champions League Men 2026/27 group phase started on Wednesday night, with seven games played as round 4 got underway.
It was a difficult game, but we started well. Partizan managed to come back in the first half and played very well. We had some problems stopping Wagner, but overall we were efficient. In the second half, we managed to win more balls and turn them into good attacking opportunities. Our defence also improved, and we were able to maintain that level until the end. It was a very important win for us, and now we have to focus on our next challenge.
Veszprém are a great team at the moment and they’re in really good shape. We did our best, especially in the first half, but they played much better in the second half. We made some mistakes, and we have to keep developing and improving step by step. So, yes, we need to work harder.
We took a lot of pleasure tonight. The supporters were crazy. Night of Champions League in our H Arena — that is why we make this job. We did a really good game from A to Z and I hope we could do it again and against every team. It's a good feeling tonight, and we don't depend on the other, just us. It's a good job, with a good goalkeeper. We had rage today. Now game after game, nothing is easy in this group.
That’s the team of Nantes that I know. We were not at our level, unlike last week, and Nantes was very strong. We wanted to keep the advantage we took last week, but we didn’t manage to do it. We didn’t do anything today, and we’ll see the consequences for the competition. We lacked aggressivity, energy, even the defence was not a the level we expected. We can congratulate Nantes for the game they played.
We didn't play our best handball today, but we give our heart, and sometimes, you know, when you give the heart, you don't need to play nice handball — just the most important is to win.
We know how important it is this to play in this arena. It's full of our supporters, and really, if we want to make something big, to achieve something big, in this season, we need them.
Three or four matches, we lose for one goal, so it's something that we need to work up. Young team, with young coach — maybe incoming matches or hopefully next year, we will do these close matches a little bit better. But one more time, fair correct match from this line. At the end, a better team.
They were much more agressive than the game we had against them at home last week, but we showed good character today. We're happy with the qualification for the main round, but there are still two more matches to play and we’ll give everything to win those two matches and finish this group phase as strong as possible.
We once again felt the power of Paris, you know, who are physically extremely strong, fast, and we simply had trouble in defence stopping their game. We wanted to be destructive, but somehow it wasn't working for us and the consequence was a larger number of goals conceded. In attack, I have to say that we were good. In the end, we scored 30 goals, that we were patient for most of the game, that we also had solutions — but simply the quality of Paris, of the Paris players, is so high that they knew or had an answer to all our plays regarding defence.
It was a tough match. There will be a few of us, at least, who will be sore for the next couple of days. But predominantly a great fight from our side, despite the unnecessarily close ending.
Our goal here was to continue playing and fighting well for the full 60 minutes, which we managed to do. We didn't give up in tough situations when we were three, four or five goals down. We kept playing our defence and kept running with Aalborg. In the end, it was millimetres that separated us from the points.
Incredible away win for us, and I think it was the whole team in second half who pulled together and gave us an historical evening.
We are very disappointed with our performance. We never came up to the level we wanted to play. Congrats to Kriens-Luzern. We have to keep working.
Kielce was well prepared, while we struggled at first. We let them dictate the pace of the game, which is obviously not what you want to do, especially at home. But the way we finished the first half was really strong, and the way we carried that momentum into the second half was impressive. That gave us confidence, and from there, we kept pushing and saw it through. Now, of course, we’re delighted to have secured our place in the next round ahead of schedule.
We did our homework. If you compare this game to the one a week ago, we’ve taken a huge step forward. We defended very well, especially in the first half, and we were also very consistent in attack. We were a little slow to get going at the start of the second half, and when Magdeburg scores two, three or four goals in a row, it becomes difficult against a world-class team like this, especially with such an incredible crowd behind them.
