Only the CL title matters

The semi-finals saw the first defeat of the season for Austrian Hypo Niederösterreich. The legendary club going for their fifth CL title showed a less convincing performance in Togliatti and lost by three goals. Hypo will definitely have to improve for the second leg.

Tímea Tóth, top scorer of the team and also of the Champions League at the moment, tells us more about it.

Eurohandball.com: Hypo lost in Togliatti by three goals. What was your impression of the game?

Tímea Tóth: The team have underperformed last weekend. We were simply unable to put the tactics we talked about into practice. I don’t really know why it happened, and we were even lucky to only lose by three goals. Luckily, Lada also made some mistakes.

Eurohandball.com: What do you have to change for the second leg?

Tímea Tóth: Lada are a good team for sure. They have young players, while we have a more experienced team. I hope this will also help us at the end.

We have been analysing the first match on the video, we know what the mistakes were, so we will try to correct them.

We want to win the Champions League and on the way we have to win the semi-finals too.

Eurohandball.com: This was the first defeat of the team during the whole season. Did anything change?

Tímea Tóth: I would say that it was a warning signal at the right time. Only if we would have won by one goal in Russia, we would believe now that everything is going right for us. Now we know at least that we have to improve.

Our team played the last match against a good opponent five weeks ago, the players had international duties, so the “feeling” we had before has gone. This means that we may be a bit less confident or concentrated. But we work on it.

Eurohandball.com: Do you keep an eye on the top scorer list? You are leading currently with 107 goals…

Tímea Tóth: Even if I wouldn’t, my friends call my attention to it. I honestly say that it is not important for me. The only thing that matters is the Champions League title. If in addition I become top scorer, that’s a big thing, but the objective is the CL trophy.