Foreshadow: Barcelona – Veszprém

Telekom Veszprém’s team will visit FC Barcelona Lassa in their home on Saturday in the 5th round of VELUX EHF Champions League. The derby will start at 7:15PM, live broadcast on Sport1 from 6:45PM.

 

The Spanish champion has not lost any matches out of 16, neither in the Champions’ League nor in the „point hunt” at their home so far in this season. Veszprém has something to ’repay’ because Barcelona dominates the battle between them. The two teams met 16 times so far and Barcelona won 11 times while „Építők” won only 4 times. There was only one draw. We last met in 2015 in the finals of the Champions League Final4, where we lost by 5 goals and the Spanish team got the trophy.

 

 

There was a big change in their roster during the summer, great names have left the team and new ones arrived. Marko Kopljar came to us, Danjel Saric went to Quatar, Daniel Sarmiento went to Saint Raphael, Eduardo Gurbindo went to Nantes, Gudjon Valur Sigurdsson went to Löwen and Carlos Ruesga – who was also in our team previsouly – joined Porting Lissabon’s team. On the other side, most players who joined the Spanish team arrived from France. Joan Saubich from Aix-en-Povance, Dika Mem from Tremblay, Timothey N’Guessan from Chambery, Valero Rivera from Nantes. Borko Ristovski, one of the ’big fishes’, came from Löwen for the place of Saric. The other great player is Lasse Andersson from Kolding. The young left back scored 63 goals on 13 matches last year.

 

Barcelona is on the first place of Liga Asobal, they collected 16 points on 8 matches. Granollers got the second spot with a 4-point difference. They played in the championship on Tuesday and defeated Villa de Aranda for 36:28 on home court. The best goal scorers in the Spanish Championship are Rivera and Lazarov with 29 and 28 goals.

 

 

Barcelona has not lost any points neither in the Spanish Championship nor in the Champions League. They precede PSG and Veszprém with two points. There were a tight and an easy victory on home court so far. In the second round they defeated Kiel for 26:25 and in the latest round they also defeated Schaffhausen for 38:25. The situation is almost the same as for away matches. In Plock’s home they won for 28:23 in the first round and in the third round in Germany they won for 28:27 against Flensburg’s team. Wael Jallouz scored 19, Kiril Lazarov and Valero Rivera 17-17, while the team captain Victor Tomas scored 16 goals on these four matches.

 

Veszprém has won a great battle against the German record champion THW Kiel for 21:19 last weekend. After this, they also won against Mezőkövesd in the Hungarian Championship for 30:26.

 

 

If Veszprém wins it can catch up with Barcelona on the top of the group. It would be especially a brilliant result because we could not get any point in their home during the common history of these two clubs.

 

 

Photos: Zsolt Melczer and facebook.com/pg/ehf.champions.league