Bitter defeat for FCK

Montpellier, Kiel, Chechov and Zagreb won the Sunday’s games of matchday 5 in Men’s CL – and all of these four are on the best way to qualify for the last 16. Kiel and Montpellier lead their groups, Zagreb overtook FCK in the table and ranks third now and Chechov is ahead of Constanta after winning in Romania. The current leaders of the groups at “halftime” of the group phase are very international and come from four countries: France, Hungary, Spain and Germany.

Group A:

Montpellier HB – Pick Szeged 30:23 (13:10)

Montpellier remains unbeaten on home soil and remain number one in group A, for Szeged it will be hard to remain in the CL, as the gap to the fourth place is already three points. Montpellier had the better start, was leading 6:2, before Pick woke up and reduced to 10:12. Montpellier reacted by chaning defence. As the hosts were ahead with seven goals the match was decided. Best Montpellier player was Issam Tej with seven goals and an outstanding defence performance.

HCM Constanta – Chechovski Medvedi 22:28 (11:14)

Chechov took the “fortress Buzau”, where Montpellier was beaten, with a very clear result. Constanta was in lead only in the very beginning. From minute 23 on, the Russians dominated the game and extended the lead from three goals at the break to 19:13 in minute 46, as Constanta only scored two goals in 16 minutes. Thanks to their physical strong defence and their tall back court players, Chechov didn’t have problems to take this six goal lead to the final whistle. Topscorers for Constanta was Toma with seven goals, the same number as Kovalev for Chechov. Both team have six points on their account at the “halftime” of CL, two points behind Montpellier and one behind Valladolid.

Group C:

FCK Haandbold – RK Zagreb 28:29 (15:18)

Bitter defeat for FCK, important victory for Zagreb: The tension was high until the last second of the match – and even one second more. FCK seemed to have scored the equalizer by Tommy Atterhäll (topscorer with twelve goals), but the ball hit the net one second too late, so the final result was 29:28 for the Croats. Due to this victory, Zagreb is ahead of FCK with two points now, but still four points behind current leader Ciudad Real. Nobody expected such a tensioned finish of the match in the middle of halftime two, as Zagreb had increased their halftime lead (18:15) to a quite comfortable 24:18. But then the FCK express started rolling, the Danes equalizedby Anders Christiansen at the score of 27:27. Seven seconds before the end, Zagreb’s topscorer Kiril Lazarow scored his ninth goal – 29:28. “We played like day and night”, strong FCK goalkeeper Kasper Hvidt said: “It’s very hard to lose such a match.”

Group D:

THW Kiel – Amicitia Zürich 42:24 (18:12)

No problems against Zürich and on the straight way to the last 16: THW Kiel remained unbeaten number one of group D and showed an extra ordinary performance against poor Swiss team that was really overrolled. Christian Sprenger was Kiel’s topscorer with nine goals. 11:8, 14:8, 18:12 and 22:12 (34.) were the intermediate steps to the clear victory in the first part of the match. Zurich lacked power and speed, as Kiel went away goal by goal, including an 8:2 series in the final stage. “It wasa good match”, Kiel’s coach Alfred Gislasson said, “we had two objectives: to win and to put all players on the field. So we had two different teams, one for each halftime. By keeping the speed high, we took a very clear result.” Zürich coach Robert Nijdam said: “THW showed incredible counter attacks. We never had been able to stop them.” In his team Basic was the topscorer with eight goals.