Season Summary – Hungarian championship

In the upcoming weeks we will look back on Telekom Veszprém's 2016/17 performance in each tournaments in a form of an article. In this article we will look back on the Hungarian championship (K&H League).

 

 

Differing from the previous years our club played the whole season in the Hungarian championship not only in the playoffs. We had 26 games in the championship’s regular season and with the exception of the 26:23 loss against Szeged on the road we won all of them. We scored 821 goals in that series. The top scorer for our team was Gasper Marguc with 70 goals. Interesting fact that throughout the season 39 players got an opportunity from head coach Xavi Sabaté to play in the first class.

 

The regular season of championship saw the two top contenders in a draw at the top of the table. Both teams had a loss against each other so they tied with 50 points each. The 2 goals home win for Veszprém was not enough after the 3 goals loss in Szeged, which meant that Szeged won the regular season and was entitled for the home advantage.

 

 

The first game of the final was held in Veszprém and resulted in a 23:17 win for Veszprém with Szeged leading in the half time 8:10. In the second half we crushed the opponent which is visualized well with the fact that they could only score 7 goals in the second period. Our defense was tight, and Mikler was outstanding in the goal. Gajic and Lékai scored 4 goals each while from Szeged Bodó scored 5, Balogh and Kallman scored 4-4 goals. We had a confident 6 goals lead in the final leading up to the game in Szeged.

 

The second game of the final saw a lot of goals because neither of the defenses performed as tough as they did in Veszprém. Above all, Szeged lost their goalkeeper, Sierra, due to a finger injury after the first game. Veszprém controlled the first half until the 8th minutes when Szeged climbed back and took a 2 goals lead. At the 20th minute Veszprém equalized and the two teams were head-to-head with each other but our opponent could take the break at half time with a minimal lead (15:14). In the second period the teams were side by side but at the last 5 minutes Szeged took a last go at the game and managed to win by 3 goals. Unfortunately for them it was not enough, the result was 30:27 which meant that yet again Veszprém won the Hungarian championship which is the 25th one. In Szeged Kallman scored 7 goals while Bodó and Balogh scored 6 each. From Veszprém the top scorer was Palmarsson with 5 goals while Gajic and Lékai scored 4 times each.

 

 

Photos: Zsolt Melczer and Dávid Vörös