Raging bull Karabatic leaves Bjerringbro behind

Paris Saint-Germain Handball remain Barcelona’s first hunter in Group A of the VELUX EHF Champions League as they claimed their fourth straight win in Round 5, leaving the home side Bjerringbro-Silkeborg chanceless.

•    10,201 fans attend the homecoming of the Danish Olympic champions Mikkel Hansen and Henrik Möllgaard
•    BSV play their fourth home match in a row – and record their third defeat after those against Kiel and Flensburg
•    Nikola Karabatic top scores with an impressive nine goals, while Nikolaj Markussen strikes six times for Silkeborg

GROUP A
Bjerringbro-Silkeborg (DEN) vs. Paris Saint-Germain Handball (FRA) 30:36 (16:19)

At the start of six straight clashes with top teams – with two games against PSG, Veszprem and Barcelona to be played before December – BSV stood quite strong, but still had little chance against the French powerhouse.

“We had a dream that we could challenge the big guys from Paris. We had 20 great minutes in the beginning of the first half, where I saw our defence put on a very nice performance,” said BSV coach Peter Bredsdorff-Larsen.

“The problem for us was that Paris’ counter attack is absolutely the best, fastest and most effective in the VELUX EHF Champions League. We experienced that. We are not a bad team running back but today we looked bad in some situations. They won a period with 5:0 in the first half on that account and that was decisive. I was happy with the performance overall.”

A strong start for the hosts

Backed by the 10,201 fans in the final venue for two European (2010 and 2014) and one World Championship (2015) in Herning, BSV had their best period up to when they led 11:9 – but then the team of head coach Peter Bredsdorff-Larsen were overrun by the French champions.

PSG quickly turned the match around to 16:12, and could not even be stopped by two time-outs for the host within seven minutes.

Markussen leads in attack

As the half-time buzzer drew closer, Bjerringbro recovered and struck back led by tall shooter Nikolaj Markussen, who was reportedly sick all night, but fired from all cylinders against PSG in the afternoon.

His sixth goal for 16:18 forced PSG coach Zvonimir Serdarusic to use his green card, after which Markussen’s last action before the break caused a two-minute suspension for Möllgaard.

But even the time shorthanded seemed to back Paris, as they used an additional court player and recorded a 4:0 series within only five minutes that shocked the host. From then on (23:16) the visitors had a comfortable cushion for the rest of the match.

Karabatic returns to full strength

In attack, one could see that Nikola Karabatic had fully recovered from his knee injury three weeks ago at Plock, as he found the gaps in BSV’s defence and finished with nine goals in his tally. After him came Nedim Remili (seven) and Uwe Gensheimer (six).