Leon ready for the show

From Friday to Sunday, Ademar Leon will face the first big challenge of the season. The Wild Card Qualification Tournament of the EHF Champions League will be played on Leon with four top teams facing each other for the one ticket to the CL.

Celje, Lemgo and Kadetten Schaffhausen are equally strong teams. The Spanish coach Ribera is not worried, though his team lost to top teams such as Montpellier and Valladolid during the pre-season.

“I don’t like to lose, but obviously, it’s better to be defeated in a friendly match than at such an important tournament. We could learn from these matches and we tried to rectify our mistakes.

“We played on a good level against Montpellier, but they are very strong team. It was different against Valladolid. We made some mistakes in attack and they had space to run. They applied their weapon, fast break, very well.”

Now the time has come for the serious tests. The physical trainings are over and the tactical situations are on the agenda.

"We practice tactical elements from Tuesday until the start of the tournament. We have information on Lemgo and Celje because they played against San Antonio in Germany some days ago,” Ribera said.

The Leon coach is optimistic that Krivoschlykov could recover until Friday.