Ruthless Rutenka shoots Barca to bronze

After a six-goal lead had slipped from their hands in the semi-final against Flensburg on Saturday, Barcelona had recovered on Sunday and eventually decided the second ‘thriller’ within 24 hours in their favour.

The Catalan team won the exciting match for third place 26:25 against a brave fighting team from Veszprem, mainly thanks to eleven goals of Siarhei Rutenka.

"Barcelona is always fighting to win, not for a bronze medal. That's of no use to us, so we're sad about it. It was really hard today, they are a great team and played," Barcelona defensive specialists Viran Morros said.

Veszprem’s Momir Ilic on the other side is very close to become top scorer of the VELUX EHF Champions League for the first time.

Striking seven goals against Barcelona Ilic now has 103 goals on his tally. This means that Marko Vujin (THW Kiel) needs to score an almost impossible 24 times in the final to surpass him.

"The season was a big success, because we got to the FINAL4. It is a pleasure to be here, but we wanted to make more out of our chances.
Today we fought until the end and so I'm proud of the team, because we showed courage even though yesterday's match laid hard on us," he said.

Veszprem coach Carlos Ortega added: "The defeat yesterday against Kiel was very bad for us. I just want to say that we are going to work harder to get the chance of getting back to Cologne next year. It's amazing here. The best event in handball all over the world."

VELUX EHF FINAL4 Placement match 3-4:  
FC Barcelona (ESP) vs MKB-MVM Veszprem (HUN) 26:25 (9:10)

Like both semi-finals on Saturday, the first half of the placement match was dominated by extraordinary goalkeeping performances.

Nandor Fazekas, who played his final match for Veszprem before ending his career, was on the same high level as Barcelona’s Arpad Sterbik.

Sterbik had played from 2001 to 2004 for Veszprem, while the Hungarian champions with Laszlo Nagy, Cristian Ugalde and coach Carlos Antonio Ortega had three former FC Barcelona players in their ranks.

Due to the strong goalkeepers and also because of some unforced errors of both sides in attack, the 20,000 spectators only saw 19 goals in the first 30 minutes during which no team was able to forge ahead by more than one goal.

However, history was nevertheless written in this first half: After THW Kiel’s Wael Jallouz had been the first African player to take to the court at the VELUX EHF FINAL4, Veszprem’s Iranian Iman Jamali became the first Asian to play in Cologne.

Jamali had replaced Renato Sulic in the Veszprem squad after Sulic had been suspended for the match following his red card against Kiel in the semi-final.

After the break Veszprem started wide wake and had clearly strengthened their defence, while  Barcelona lacked ideas in attack in these first minutes.

Three unanswered goals gave the Hungarian a 13:9 lead and forced Barcelona coach Xavi Pascual to take a timeout – and he found the words.

Led by Rutenka and Daniel Sarmiento, Barcelona scored four consecutive times in three minutes to level the score at 13:13, and 15 minutes before the end Sarmiento’s fifth goal after the break saw the Catalans take the lead at 17:16.

Even though there was no trophy to win, both teams did not give one centimeter of court space to their opponents and the final stages became a tough clash full of emotions.

With ten minutes to go the tenth Rutenka goal gave Barca the lead at 21:20 which immediately followed a ‘Lazarov hammer’ to grant the Catalans their first two-goal advance.

However, nothing was decided until the last 20 seconds. Veszprem were close to equalise at 25:24, but Barcelona’s Nikola Karabatic decided the match, scoring to make it 26:24 15 seconds before the end.