SG Flensburg-Handewitt−Telekom Veszprém 30-27 (16-12)

SG Flensburg-Handewitt−Telekom Veszprém 30-27 (16-12)
FLENS-Arena, attendance: 1703
Referees: Mandak, Rudinsky

SG Flensburg-Handewitt: Buric – Svan 1, Einarsson 4, Golla 6, Gottfridsson 5, Mensah 7, Jakobsen 3
Subs: Hald, Wanne 4 (4), Lindskog
Head coach: Maik Machulla

Telekom Veszprém: Corrales – Strlek 3, Lauge 1, Nilsson 3, Sipos, Maqueda 2, Lékai 4
Subs: Cupara (gk), Marguc 6, Lukács, Ligetvári 1, Yahia 3, Mahé 4 (1)
Head coach: Momir Ilic

Penalties: 4/4 vs 2/1
2 mins: 6, vs 10 mins

In Round 10 of Champions League we paid a visit to SG Flensburg-Handewitt. Momir Ilic could not count on the injured duo, Petar Nenadic and Dejan Manaskov, and Ilic Zoran was out of the squad too.

Telekom Veszprém got off to a promising start, Máté Lékai scored the very first goal of the game. As the game went on, due to a six minute period withouth Veszprém goals, Flensburg could have a comfortable advantage. The score was 9-5 when Momir Ilic had his first time-out. Unfortunately we could not get any closer to the home team even after the time-out, as we made numerous mistakes in attack and in defence too (16-12).

In the first minutes of the second half Flensburg could expand their lead even further, in the 34th minute we were 7 goals down. Then Telekom Veszprém slowly started to catch up thanks to their improving defensive work, but for the longest time we could not get really close to Flensburg. 4 minutes before the end we could attack for an equalizer, but the great Benjamin Buric saved again, and in the dying minutes Flensburg could make sure to keep both points at home.

Momir Ilic: − Congratulations to Flensburg for the well deserved victory! The first 5 minutes were not too bad, but after that we made a lot of mistake, our behaviour, attitude, character was awful. This worries me a lot. You can lose to Flensburg, they are a good team, but not the way we did. We could almost come back from minus 7, but we made some more mistakes and Buric made some important saves.

Maik Machulla: − We knew it was going to be a tough game, since they are a strong, physical team. I’m proud of the boys, they played excellent. We have a lot of issues these day, we couldn’t make many substitutions, they players were really exhausted by the 45th minute. In the last minutes we put up a tough fight and Buric produced great saves. It is an important victory, I’m very happy.

Rodrigo Corrales: − The coaches told pretty much everything. In the last minutes we had the chance to equalise, but Buric wouldn’t let us. We always struggle away from home, we need to work on that.

Lasse Swan: − Everybody is really happy about the victory, it was very important. We put ourselves in a bad position by losing to HC Motor, we needed this win badly. When in the dying minutes Veszprém came back into the game, we showed good character, Buric made some big saves and we were smart in attack too.