Veszprém – Kiel pregame statements

Champions’ League derby will be arranged in the Veszprém Arena on Saturday at 5:30PM. Telekom Veszprém’s opponent will be THW Kiel, which was our opponent in the last 3 semi-finals of the Champions’ League. Live broadcast on Sport1. We asked head coach Xavi Sabaté, Christian Ugalde, Mirko Alilovic and Chema Rodríguez.

 

 

Xavi Sabaté: Saturday’s match will be extremely hard but I trust in my team. We need to make our defense better. We will see whether László Nagy will be in the roster or not but we will try to do our best. In case he will not play we will rely on Ancsin, Kopljar and Gulyás to replace him. We need to trust ourselves but we will need the support from the Veszprém-fans, who are the best in this world. I would like to ask everyone who comes to the Arena to support our team because we really need it. If a player or more are missing, others have to replace them and step forward and therefore we need more support from the fans.

 

 

Mirko Alilovic: We played hard matches against Kiel in the last few years but in this year it will probably be harder than last year because they had a lot of injured players while their team is full now and they can work with 16 players. They strengthened their team during summer so we have to be really careful. There are injured players in our team so we are not in a 100% condition. However, there is nothing what we can do but work hard and prepare for the match really well. We will play in the Veszprém Arena, where we did not lose any matches in the last 4 years. This statistics is very important to us. We will do everything in order to say that after the match, too.

 

 

Cristian Ugalde: Kiel is a very good team and the fact that they defeated Paris supports that. They played very well on that match against one of the biggest candidate of Final4. Our matches against Kiel are always very hard and balanced. Last year we won with one goal on home court, lost with one goal away and in the Final4 the result was a draw at the end of the real playtime. I expect a similarly hard game. I wish I could say that it will be an easy game but that would not be true. This group is very powerful and there are only one or two-goal difference between the teams on every match. One thing is sure, we will prepare for this game very much and do everything to get the two points. It will be important to make our defense better which was not the best in Plock. There will be very hard matches in the Champions’ League and we need to collect as many points as possible, especially on home court in order to get further later.

 

 

Chema Rodríguez: Kiel has improved a lot recently, their defense is very good and their goalkeepers are excellent. We need to be careful and try not to give the ball away during our attack because they will punish us with fast break goals. However, it will be the same situation if their goalkeepers will save at the end of our inaccurate shots. They will try to score as many easy goals as possible. Their new players, such as Lukas Nilsson and Nikola Bilyk made their team more powerful because they play at a high level. However age does not important but the fact how well they play and these guys are really good.

 

Photos: Zsolt Melczer and Dávid Vörös