Foreshadow: Veszprém – Nantes

 

Today, at 6:15 p.m., Telekom Veszprém will step on court in the Eurotournoi preparation tournament in Strasbourg. Our first opponent will be HBC Nantes.

 

 

Today Telekom Veszprém will kick off their Eurotournoi. We have the two finalists of the previous Champions League series, HBC Nantes and Montpellier HC. Our two opponents clashed on Thursday evening and Motpellier managed to beat Nantes 31:27.

 

Nantes finished third in last year’s French championship behind PSG and Montpellier. They played 26 games and won 17 times, while losing 6 times and ended 3 games in a draw. Their top scorer was David Balaguer, who scored 123 goals in 24 games. He was the most efficient penalty striker, as he scored 29 times out of 33, which is a 87,88%.

 

In the Champions League they were in Group A, where they clinched third place with Barcelona having the same amount of points. They have 9 wins, 2 draws and 3 losses out of 14 games. In the knockout stage, they faced Meshkov Brest first and advanced to the quarterfinals easily with an 8 goals aggregate. For the Final4 participation, they eliminated the Danish runner-up Skjern and managed to qualify for Cologne for the first time in their history. They managed to live their dreams for more days, when they knocked out French star side PSG in the semi-final, and had to face another French team Montpellier in the final. There, they could not win, and lost by 5 goals. Their top scorer in the CL was Eduardo Gurbindo with 79 goals.

 

 

For next season, they signed Valero Rivera from Barcelona, Florian Delecroix from Cesson-Rennes and Lucien Auffret from their own youth system. Meanwhile Senjamin Buric and Jerko Matulic left the club, Junior Scott was loaned to Logrono. Dominik Klein and Guillaume Saurina have retired from handball.

 

This tournament is going to be a real strength test for the team, because we can face strong teams in the group and also strong opponents await for us in the other group, where PSG, Vardar and Meshkov Brest will play against each other. Around 60 Veszprém Fans will travel with the team to France, and we would like to thank them so much for helping the boys abroad!

 

Veszprém played last Saturday against Tatabánya and managed to win 26:20 in Győr. We hope that the crowded game plan will pump the team up and help preparations for the launch of September and the real games.

 

Let’s go Veszprém!

 

 

Photo: Dávid Vörös, EHF Champions League Facebook page