Foreshadow: Veszprém – Barcelona

After a long break VELUX EHF Champions League kicks off in Veszprém Arena on Saturday. Telekom Veszprém hosts FC Barcelona Lassa at 5:30 pm. The match is broadcasted live on Sport1 from 5:00 pm.

 

 

Veszprém will start the not so easy catching up to the top part of the group against Barcelona. In order to do that they have to beat the 9 times Champions League winner Barca. Our history is not so bright against them. We played 17 times with each other and we could only win 4 times. The other results are a draw and 12 defeat. The last time we managed to beat them was in 2011 in the last 16.

 

Barca leads group 'A' in the Champions League with only one defeat. Only PSG could beat them in November. The top goalscorer of the team is Kiril Lazarov with 49 goals. After him comes Wael Jallouz with 36 goals, and the Valero Rivera – Victor Thomas duo with 34 goals each. The biggest win they achieved this year was a 15 goals victory against the Danish Bjerringro Silkeborg. Last time the Catalans played in the CL was the 3rd of December when got a revenge for the loss against Paris. On that game Lazarov scored 9 goals.

 

 

No one can beat Barcelona in Spain. They played 17 matches so far and they won all of them. They are in the first position in their domestic league. The two teams behind them is Ademar León with a 5 point deficit and La Rioja with a 6 point deficit. This Wednesday they played against the 12th team in the league, Guadalajara, and beat them by 11 goals (32:21). Kiril Lazarov is the absolute goal scoring machine in Liga Asobal too. He scored 73 goals in 17 games.

 

Veszprém played 3 games in the last week. Two SEHA League games against Metalurg Skopje and Izvidac Ljubuski. Both games ended in a comfortable win for us. The result was 33:21 against Metalurg and 36:31 against Izvidac. On Tuesday we played in the Hungarian Championship and beat Eger with 9 goals (37:28).

 

 

It is going to be a tough game on Saturday but the team is confident and hopeful as we could read it in the pregame statements. As Gasper Marguc said "We can beat them this time."

 

Let's go Veszprém!

 

 

Photos: György Ary