Foreshadow: Plock – Veszprém

Today from 4 PM we begin the 2015/16 season of Champions League. As our coach and players said, the group round of the tournament will be harder than ever. Our first opponent, Orlen Wisla Plock is going to host us in Poland. Sport1 is broadcasting the game.

 

 

Yesterday, our team has travelled to Poland, where 73 fans of ours welcomed them and are going to cheer for them in the fantastic Orlen Arena.

 

Most of our players remember how difficult it is to play there as a guest team because in the spring of 2014 the team played with Plock in the eight final of CL, and lost it unfortunately (33:34). In Veszprém, however, we were able to qualify with a 5-goal victory. This must have been a warning sign just like Plock was the only team who had managed to defeat the final winner, Barcelona.

 

 

As we mentioned in our previous article, Veszprém faced Plock four times: in 2002 we won in the group round in an away game (25:30), then on home court (38:24). The two other games were the above mentioned eighth final of 2014. The Polish team has been able to get into the top 16 of Champions League in the past three years.

 

In the summer, three players left and three players signed for the team of Manolo Cadenas. The players who left are the following: Mariusz Jurkiewicz (Kielce), Kamil Syprzak (Barcelona) and Alexander Tioumentsev (Meshkov Brest). The leaving of the first two must be a great loss for the Polish team but the new ones might compensate them. One of the former pivot players of Veszprém, Marco Oneto (GWD Minden); Bartosz Konitz (Szczecin); and the Russian talent, Dmitrii Zhitnikov (Chekhovskie Medvedi) joined the team. The latter one revealed his talent in the last season scoring 11 goals in Veszprém Arena.

 

Coach Cadenas said that their aim is to get into the best 16 as well as to challenge all of their opponent teams. As he claims, the favourite teams of CL are Barcelona, Kiel and Kielce which is an extra motivation for our team.

 

 

Photos: György Ary