Foreshadow: Sporting – Veszprém

 

The knockout stage of the VLUX EHF Champions League will kick off on Sunday at 6:00 p.m. Hungarian time when Telekom Veszprém visits Sporting CP in the eight-final. The game will be broadcasted live by Sport 1.

 

 

This is going to be the first time we face Sporting in the history of any European Cup series, which is not a real surprise given that the Portuguese only played 16 games in the Champions League until this season, out of which they won six times and lost ten times. This year they have played 12 more matches with great results. There is only three losses next to nine victories and besides Tatran Presov, only Bjerringbro-Silkeborg could defeat them back to back. They have finished Group C on second position and met the winner of Group D, Dinamo Bucharest to qualify for the best 16. The Portuguese champions overtook this hurdle with a double victory of 26:27 and 32:31. Their top scorer in the CL is the former Veszprém center back, Carlos Ruesga with 59 goals.

 

Sporting won the Portuguese championship’s regular season drawing with Porto on top of the table. They won 24 games and lost two times. After this, the league was divided into upper house and lower house, where Sporting leads with Porto once again after one game. Last time Sporting played was on a Lisbon local derby against Benfica and managed to win 29:22. The green-white team has already been eliminated from the Portuguese Cup by losing to Portot 28:23 a couple of weeks ago.

 

 

For this season they have signed Luís Frade from Aguas Santas, Fábio Chiuffa from Logrono, Velntin Ghionea from Wisla Plock and Neven Stjepanovic from Al Duhali. The latter one has left the club, just like Pedro Portela and Filipe Borges to Tremblay, Michal Kopco to Ivry, Janko Bozovic to TV Emsdetten and Bruno Gaspar with Fransisco Tavares to Boa Hora. Manuel Gasper left the club before the start of this season, but returned to Sporting later.

 

Telekom Veszprém played against MOL-Pick Szeged last time in the Hungarian championship and lost 25:23. Their last game in the Champions League was against PGE Vive Kielce in Poland. The end of the game was a 35:36 Veszprém victory which realized the second place in the group for the “Építők”.

 

Around 140 Hungarians will travel to Portugal to support Veszprém, for which we are utterly grateful!

 

Let’s go Veszprém!

 

 

Photo: Dávid Vörös, ehfcl.com, EHF Champions League Facebook page