Foreshadow: Veszprém – Kiel

The long-awaited weekend has come, CL Final4 in Cologne just started. Semi-finals will be arranged on Saturday in Final4: at 3.15PM PSG Handball will play against Vive Tauron Kielce, while at 6PM Veszprém will play against THW Kiel. On Sunday, in the same time, there will be the bronze match and the finals. Every match will be broadcasted live on Sport1.

 

 

Cologne, Final4 semi-final and German record champion THW Kiel again. The “zebras” want to win for the third while we want to win for the first time. No. 3 is the “magic number” as for this year’s matchup. This will be the third semi-final against each other, it will be the third match against each other in the season and there are 3 players in the Hungarian team, who have played in Kiel’s team formerly; namely Momir Ilic, Christian Zeitz and Aron Palmarsson. Moreover, if “Építők” would be able to win the semi-final, they could prepare for the third CL finals after 2002 and 2015. Momir Ilic, Aron Palmarsson and László Nagy are longing for the third CL victory, while Christian Zeitz has already won three. Besides them, Andreas Nilsson, Christian Ugalde and Chema Rodriguez have a glory in final victory.

 

According to Alfred Gislason Veszprém has the biggest chance in Final4. He can say that for two reasons; there were several injuries among their players during the whole season or he may want to take the burden off of his players and put it on our players. According to the today nominated plyers’ list Rene Toft-Hansen and Steffen Weinhold will not play on the German side, while at MVM Veszprém Christian Zeitz is not going to play today.

 

 

Kiel went through on a very vicissitudinous season especially because Filip Jicha joined Barcelona and Aron Palmarsson joined Veszprém, not to mention the injuries. They also played in group “A” in the CL, where they could win only 8 matches moreover after more than 4 years they were defeated on home court by PSG. In Veszprém they lost against us (29:27) but at home they could win a very tight match (25:24). They finished on the 4th place in the group so among the best 16 they had to fight against MOL-Pick Szeged. On home court Szeged got a 4-goal advantage (33:29) but on the rematch Kiel defeated Szeged with 7 goals (36-29) and they qualified for the next games. In the quarterfinal the title defender Barcelona has waited for them and Kiel have won with 5 goals (29:24) on home court and in Spain the result was (33:30) so they have managed to participate on Final4 in Cologne for the 6th time out of 7. Marko Vujin is the most efficient player as for goals; he scored 92 so far.

 

This will be the 14th clash in the CL for the Hungarian and for the German record champions. The time has come to equalize the balance because we have 6 victories but 7 defeats against the “zebras”. Our triumph would mean that after 13 years THW Kiel would be without the big trophy at the end of the season because both the German Championship and German Cup have gone for them.

 

MVM Veszprém has prepared a lot and they gathered strength from the last Saturday’s Championship Title. Xavi Sabaté and his team focus exclusively on the semi-final as it turned out from the statements.

 

Approximately three thousands of fans are expected to accompany the team to Cologne to help them achieve the best results during the weekend. But as the team does, everyone should focus on the semi-final first. Go for it, Veszprém!