Magdeburg, Nantes and Silkeborg double their points

SC Magdeburg, HBC Nantes and Bjerringbro-Silkeborg all have maximum points in their respective groups after the Sunday matches in the Men’s EHF Cup.

Magdeburg won narrowly 34:33 away against Dinamo Bucuresti in Group A, while HCB Nantes defeated Team Tvis Holstebro 32:23 in Group B, where Frisch Auf Göppingen won 40:20 against OCI-LIONS.

In Group C, Bjerringbro-Silkeborg won a close match 28:25 away against Pfadi Winterthur.

GROUP A

Dinamo Bucuresti (ROU) vs SC Magdeburg (GER) 33:34 (18:14)

Not until Austrian right wing Robert Weber made it 34:32 for Magdeburg from a penalty with 32 seconds left was the
Magdeburg win a fact, and it took the German side a lot of hard work to get that far.

It did not take Dinamo long to take the upper hand.

Their defence, which changed between a defensive and a more offensive formation was a constant challenge to Magdeburg who took many risky shots and committed several technical mistakes which gave Dinamo plenty of counter attacks.

The home team was leading by five goals for most of the half until the beginning of the second half, when Magdeburg finally seemed to have found solutions against the Romanian defence at the same time, and as they tightened up their own defence.

Ten minutes and 34 seconds into the second half, Robert Weber equalised to make it 22:22 for Magdeburg, and less than one minute later, he gave them the lead at 23:22.

Soon after, the visitors went three goals up, and although Dinamo came back at 31:31, Magdeburg managed to take the win at the end.

GROUP B

Frisch Auf Göppingen (GER) vs OCI-LIONS (NED) 40:20 (22:10)

Frisch Auf Göppingen revenged their 34:31 away defeat to Team Tvis Holstebro in their opening match in style.

The Dutch champions never stood a chance in EWS Arena, where the home team was in charge from the start.

In fact, the LIONS were only able to follow their opponents until the score 1:1.

From then on, Frisch Auf simply steamrolled the visitors.

From 3:1, Göppingen increased their lead continuously throughout the rest of the first half, leading by 12 goals already at half-time.
Despite the big lead, the hosts did not slow down in the last half hour, but continued to increase the gap to finally win by 20 goals.

While the win was Göppingen’s first in the group stage, OCI-Lions suffered their second clear defeat, having lost 33:26 at home to Nantes in their first match

HBC Nantes (FRA) vs Team Tvis Holstebro (DEN) 32:23 (17:9)

Nantes took their second clear win in succession, as they won clearly against Holstebro who defeated Frisch Auf Göppingen 34:31 in their first match.

However, the hosts had to worry for a while in the second half, as their lead was minimised to three goals before they managed to remove any doubt at the end.

Nantes were completely dominant from the start.

Holstebro’s attacking play was no match for Nantes’ aggressive 3-2-1 defence, and when the visitors managed to create scoring opportunities after all, Argentinian international Matias Schulz had a stellar performance in goal.

Already in the first half, Nantes had several nine-goal leads before winning the first 30 minutes by eight.

And improving and more optimistic Danish team managed to reduce the distance to just three goals with 14 minutes left, but Nantes managed to regain focus and dominate the rest of the match to take a clear nine-goal win and an early lead in the group.

GROUP C

Pfadi Winterthur (SUI) vs Bjerringbro-Silkeborg (DEN) 25:28 (13:14)

In spite of missing their line player Michael Knudsen and right wing Dennis Kirkegaard due to injury, Bjerringbro-Silkeborg managed to take their second win out of two, as they won 28:25 in front of 1100 spectators in the Eulachhalle of Winterthur.

Having lost their first match 31:27 away to SKA Minsk, Pfadi were chasing their first points in the group phase, and for large parts of the match, they seemed to have a good chance to do so, as the game was equal with the lead changing hands constantly.

Most of the first half, the difference was only one goal, but both teams also had a couple of two-goal leads, before the visitors could take a 14:13 lead with them to the half-time break.

Early in the second half, Pfadi Winterhur had the upper hand with a couple of two goal leads, but Silkeborg came back once again, and as they went three goals up for the first time, at 25:22, the hosts did not manage to come back again.

“It was a very important match and a very important win for us.

“We are still going to play against Minsk as well as against Winterthur at home, and if we win those two matches, we will be at eight points, which should be enough to proceed to the quarter-final.

“Therefore, we are very happy with the win, also considering that we were missing a couple of our most important players,” Silkeborg playmaker Sebastian Skube told his club’s website