Goals galore in the city of lights as PSG thump Metalurg

Paris Saint-Germain Handball celebrated one of their easiest wins in Europe’s elite club competition when they hosted HC Metalurg on Sunday. The hosts rarely needed to get out of second gear against the Macedonian champions in the one-sided contest.

PSG coach Philippe Gardent was able to give many players extra minutes on the court while resting some of his regular starters, notably top scorer Mikkel Hansen, who spent long spells on the bench but still scored a bunch of goals.

VELUX EHF Champions League Group A

Paris Saint-Germain Handball (FRA) vs HC Metalurg (MKD) 35:24 (19:10)

There was only going to be one outcome in this cat-and-mouse game, with PSG dominating from start to finish in front of their fans in the French capital.

Having had a fairly quiet VELUX EHF Champions League campaign so far, Croatian right back Marko Kopljar finally displayed his potential and led PSG in the first half with three goals, while a myriad of other players scored two each.

The balanced workload in attack demonstrated PSG’s superiority, although Metalurg fought as hard as they could to keep the deficit down with Renato Vugrinec netting three goals in the opening period.

The Macedonian title holders, who fell behind rapidly after being level at 3:3 early on, made a bright start in the second half and briefly reduced the scoreline to seven (21:14) shortly after the break.

But the home side then moved up a gear as the goals started to fly in from all angles and their advantage soared to 32:18 with 10 minutes left.

The slump forced Metalurg coach Lino Cervar to call a timeout. His energetic team talk seemed to breathe a bit of life into the visitors, who went down fighting but could not avoid a heavy defeat against one of the favourites to reach this season’s VELUX EHF FINAL4.

Kopljar led the winners with six goals as PSG had a whopping 86% scoring rate in the first half and still an impressive 74% at the end of the match, when they were treated by a standing ovation from the appreciative home crowd.