Buducnost defeat Hypo

Four out of four! That’s the summary of Buducnost T-Mobile’s performance in the first four rounds of the Regional League. The champions of Montenegro are leading the table of the competition with eight points after having defeated three regular Champions League participants, Slovenian Krim Mercator (32:30), Gjorce Petrov from FYR Macedonia (33:27) and Hypo Niederösterreich (34:32) on Saturday evening.

The game against Hypo was a prelude to the upcoming clash in Group B in the CL. It was an exciting game in the Moraca hall, a real derby of the Regional League.

Both teams had a chance to win. Buducnost were better in the first half, leading 7:3 after 14 minutes, but Hypo came back five minutes later to level the score at 8:8. At the half time the home team were in front by two goals (17:15), but Hypo were leading by three goals after 13 minutes in the second half (26:23). The Austrians were close to victory with two goals advantage in 53rd minute (31:29).

At the end Buducnost managed to clinch the victory, thanks to great saves from goalkeeper Sonja Barjaktarovic (13 saves in total) in the final minutes, and also to a couple of very important goals coming from Tihana Ambros. The final result was a big satisfaction and joy for the home players and the fans.

Comments from Podgorica

The victory against the top European side and CL runner-up may give a lot of confidence to the team of Gyula Zsiga before the start of the CL.

“Only in the last minutes I realised that we could win the match. Hypo won a lot of games in the final seconds. In the second half our defence was not as good as in the first 30 minutes, so we had to change to a 5-1 zone. I think that was the key together with our great attack. I was satisfied with the organized team play, especially with the disciplined attacks. We scored 34 goals against the best team of Europe and that was not easy especially with the good performance of their goalkeeper, Englert. We deserved the victory, congratulations to the team,” said the coach of Buducnost T-Mobile, Gyula Zsiga.

Marija Jovanovic, Jovanka Radicevic and Ana Radovic scored seven goals, just as the Korean player of Hypo, Bok Hee Myoung.

“With great heart and fighting spirit we managed to beat the team that was close to win the Champions League last year. I must thank our fans who were our “eighth player”, I’m happy that we had the opportunity to reward them with a victory. We proved that we can play even against the best teams of Europe. The game against Hypo showed that we are on the right track to build a strong team that deserves to be among the top European teams. It is our obligation to continue in this direction and I hope that we will be ready for the CL,” said Marija Jovanovic, left back of Buducnost, top scorer of the Regional League with 34 goals.

For András Németh, coach of Hypo Niederösterreich, this was a very useful match:

“My team took a long trip to Podgorica. Last week we only had three trainings, so this match was a good training for us and preparation for the CL matches,“ said Németh.

On Wednesday Buducnost T-Mobile will play one more derby – this time against Croatian Podravka, another unbeaten team. The game in Moraca hall will be another opportunity for the Montenegrin champions to cheer up the home fans.