Interview with Momir Ilic

 

Momir Ilic, Telekom Veszprém’s 2-meters-high player, has helped his team with 47 goals in the fall season of VELUX Champions League. He scored 47 goals out of the team’s 239 goals, which means that he scored around one-fifth of them. Without him Xavi Sabaté’s team would not be on the third place in its group. ‘Momo’ is proud of his performance but he also says modestly that it would not have happened without his teammates and tactic.

 

 

 

Ilic, who will be 35 years old two days before Christmas, was the player of THW Kiel when he could experience what is like to be a Champions League winner. As a member of the Hungarian champion team he managed to get closer to the top for three times in a row and he got the closest to it in the Final4 2016.

 

‘It is early to say what would be on next year’s Final4 because nothing is clear and we have rivals who can show a ‘CL finals’ performance on some matches. It is a question who will be capable of doing such a performance when we need to give our best twice within 48 hours at the end of the season.’ – said the Serbian top scorer of CL 2014 and 2015 to the member of Telekom Sporthír Szolgálat.

 

Momir Ilic acknowledged that his team had bad series in October and the illness and injuries just made the situation of Telekom Veszprém harder. He thinks that on those days the support of the fans was very important to them.

 

‘In November we started to get out of the bad series but we are still far from the top. Only patience and discipline can help the team over this series so that is why we were glad that we could finally win away on Sunday. We are moving forward from step by step and we trust that next year’s season will make us forget everything what was wrong. To make it possible we need to work as a complete and powerful team.’- emphasized the sportsman who is famous not only about his shooting skills but also his fighting attitude.

 

 

 

Telekom Veszprém ended only its Champions League season on Sunday because they still have 7 SEHA League matches. The first one will be on Tuesday evening when Vardar Skopje comes to Veszprém.

 

‘We will remember this fall as the season of long travels and hard matches but we believe that next year will be easier and more successful. In the first period of the CL group matches we played 5 times away out of 9. In the second period, which starts on February 11, we will have only 5 matches and out of those 3 will take place in the Veszprém Arena. We welcome Barcelona’s team on February 11, Wisla Plock on February 25 and Flensburg-Handewitt on March 11. We have to qualify for the next round but in this tournament we have to fight for every point on the group matches, too. As I said we need to work really hard for the best results.’ – claimed Momir Ilic.

 

Telekom Veszprém is on the third place with 10 points in the CL group behind Barcelona, which has 16 points and PSG, which has 14 points. However, it needs to be added that Flensburg-Handewitt, which has 9 points, played one less matches.

 

 

 

Photos: Zsolt Melczer