Viborg face unknown opponent

Danish Viborg HK and Turkish champion Besiktas IK Istanbul will have the honour to play the first match at in the Champions League this season. Wednesday night the two teams will meet in Viborg Stadionhal for the first leg of their qualification tie for the first group stage of the Men’s Champions League.

When the result of the draw was known two months ago, Viborg coach Søren Hildebrand admitted to know very little about his team’s opponents. This has not changed much in the meantime.

“We still know very little about Besiktas. It has not been possible for us to get any kind of video material on them and we have not been able to get much information through contacts in Turkey either,” Søren Hildebrand told Eurohandball.com. 

“We will, therefore, have to concentrate on ourselves and on our own way of playing. Considering the general difference between the level of Danish and Turkish handball, we have to consider ourselves to be favourites of course. This also makes us to be humble towards this task, I think,” the Viborg coach added, whose team have recently tanked self-confidence through a 29-28 win over possible Champions League opponents, Chehovskie Medvedi, and from playing well against MKB Veszprém. The Hungarian top team won 31-26 at the end, though.

Complete squad 

Søren Hildebrand seems to be able to pick his team for the match from a complete roster.

“Right winger, Mikkel Aagaard, and right back, Per Leegaard, are fit again. They had minor injuries last week,” said Hildebrand, who can also count on his three talented young wingers, Stefan Nielsen, Stefan Hundstrup and Jesper Meinhøj. These three are back from the U21 World Championship in Macedonia, where they were part of the bronze winning Danish team. 

“It is obvious that it has been a handicap for us to be without them for great parts of our preparations for the season, but we have known this for a long time. It’ll be reinforcement for our team to have them back,” Søren Hildebrand said.

The second leg between the Turkish champions and the Danish Champions League debutants will take place in Istanbul on 8 September. The aggregate winner will enter Group E, where the other teams are Russian champions Chehovskie Medvedi, German runner-up HSV Hamburg and Ukrainian champions, ZTR Zaporozhye.