Season Summary – Champions League

Group A in the VELUX EHF Champions League was stronger than ever this year and Telekom Veszprém happened to be drawn in that. It is enough to say that the first 3 in this group reach the Final4 without an exception.

 

For us the season started in Flensburg in September where we achieved a 24:24 draw. Out of 14 games we had 8 victories, 2 draws and 4 losses. We achieved great wins. For example beating THW Kiel in Germany for the first time in our history. In the last games of the group phase we hosted Flensburg and that game had some weight to it. If the Germans have won, Veszprém would have gotten to the branch of the winner of this year, Vardar Skopje. Fortunately we managed to win and qualified for the best 16 at the 3rd place in the group.

 

 

In the best 16 we faced the Croatian champion. PPD Zagreb qualified at the 6th place in Group B. We started in Zagreb and won by one goal, 22:23. Gasper Marguc and Renato Sulic scored 4 while Dragan Gajic, Andreas Nilsson and Cristian Ugalde scored 3 goals each. We had a minimal advantage to the second leg which did not bring as fierce battle as the first leg. Our defense let up 19 goals while our offense scored 29. Momir Ilic, Gasper Marguc and Cristian Ugalde scored 5 goals each. It was 41:52 in aggregate and we had were heading to the quarter finals confidently.

 

In the quarter finals we faced the French surprise team of this year Montpellier. They beat last year's winner Kielce in the best 16 which directly meant that it will not be a cake walk against them. In the first leg in Veszprém we won 26:23 but the whole game was very exciting and the French side showed why they got here. In the second leg Montpellier managed to get back to the game by having a 4 goals lead at half time. For the second period Veszprém woke up and turned to game to their favor, and won the game by 5 goals. The French team could only score 10 goals in the second half. Aron Palmarsson scored 13 while Nagy László scored 10 goals in these two games. The end result was 25:30 and 56:48 in aggregate which meant that we qualified for the Final4 for the 4th time in a row.

 

 

In Cologne we faced another French team. We have already played against PSG in the Group phase but unfortunately we lost both games. Our players tried to make this right and they were really close to it this time. We were right behind Paris for the whole game but still lost 26:27. In that game Nagy László scored 6, Dragan Gajic and Gasper Marguc scored 5-5 goals each. In the bronze match we played against Barcelona. Both team were disappointed but it showed more on Barca. We were in the lead for the full game and ended up winning by 4 goals which meant that we were able to beat them after 6 years. Aron Palmarsson scored 8 while Lékai Máté, Nagy László and Cristian Ugalde scored 6 goals each in this game. We finished in the 3rd place in this year's XELUX EHF Champions League.

 

 

Photos: Zsolt Melczer, Angela Grewe and Dávid Vörös