Veszprém Expect Another Spectacular Game

Hungarian champions MKB Veszprém are showing down with THW Kiel of Germany in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. The first leg was played in Hungary and brought a three-goal victory for the home side. Eurohandball.com asked István Csoknyai, the assistant coach and former player of Veszprém to give us his views on the first match and his expectations from the second one.

Eurohandball.com: What was your experience in the first leg game with THW Kiel?

Csoknyai: We played quite badly in the first twenty minutes. We were trying to assist the pivot prematurely so the ball was usually stolen by Kiel, and they scored easy goals on the counterattacks. They were ahead of us throughout the first half and, unfortunately, almost all the way in the second half, too. To exaggerate a bit, I could say that the only winning chance we had was in the last ten minutes. Actually, this is also a positive sign of our fighting spirit: Kiel is used to having such high-key battles in the Bundesliga, with so many good teams around, while we can easily win most of our matches in the Hungarian championship, if we focus in the first 15 minutes. So I am especially proud that we could produce such an endgame under these conditions. We knew that Kiel was going to play a speedgame, and we wanted to stop them, but we were not efficient enough, as is clearly shown by the 36 German goals. We must tighten up our defence if we want to qualify for the next round, and what else could be our target? Three goals in today’s fast handball are almost nothing, they can equalize in less than two minutes, so we cannot even try playing to preserve our minimal lead. We must consider as if we played the first match on Thursday, with the winner going to the final four. I am sure that our opponent will do the same, and we’ll play a spectacular, offensive game.

Eurohandball.com: You mentioned that Kiel scored 36 goals, which is a lot and there were problems in your defence. What did you mean specifically?

Csoknyai: The main problem was that we could not contain their fast counterattacks. They scored 10 goals from fastbreaks in the first half, and we were lagging far behind in this element of the game. The other problem spot was our central defence against the pivot, since they assisted him quite successfully, sometimes from relatively far, too. Ahlm received a lot of assists, and we could catch only one of them, I think. He also managed to get a lot of penalties. The third problem was that sometimes they could score from really far, like 10-12 meters. In spite of all this, I think I should praise our players for the excellent fighting spirit. If we had not made some mistakes in the endgame, we would have been able to amass a larger lead, but I am not dissatisfied.

Eurohandball.com: What do you expect from the return leg on Thursday?

Csoknyai: Practically speaking, this will be an “all-in” game, one match to decide everything. Kiel will be supported by their ten thousand fans in the critical moments, and our job will be to survive these critical moments. If we can produce a similar endgame as in the first leg, anything can happen.