The European Handball Federation issues a media statement following comments made by German club and EHF Champions League Men participants, SG Flensburg-Handewitt, following the assessment of matches in the EHF Champions League Men on Friday, 26 February 2021.

On Friday evening the club issued a media release, calling the decision of the European Handball Federation to assess matches and the eventual results in the EHF Champions League a decision that came as ‘utter surprise’ (German original: "dies gab die EHF […] völlig überraschend vor Ende der Hauptrunde […] via Pressemitteilung bekannt.").

Furthermore, according to the club’s release the decision was made ‘without prior involvement of the clubs’ and ‘communicated only via media release and without any additional reasoning’ (German original: "...wurde ohne die Einbeziehung der Vereine eine Entscheidung getroffen, die zudem nur über eine Pressemitteilung und ohne jegliche Begründung übermittelt wurde.")

Responding to these comments, the EHF underlines that all clubs of the EHF Champions League Men (as well as those of the EHF European League Men) were directly informed by the European Handball Federation on 12 February as well as before the release of the EHF’s decision on 26 February.

The assessment of matches as such, as it was communicated on 26 February, therefore neither came as ‘utter surprise’ nor is it true that these decisions were made without prior communication to the clubs. The decision and the reasoning behind were communicated to all clubs in question before the public information was sent.

Subsequently, the European Handball Federation has asked the club SG Flensburg-Handewitt to publicly correct the statements made by its club representatives.

The group phase of the EHF Champions League Men concludes in the coming week and following the conclusion the European Handball Federation is looking forward to an exciting play-offs with 16 teams participating at the end of March.