Györ down Podravka in MOTW; Metz open title defence with win
The EHF Champions League Women 2026/27 threw off on Saturday with four encounters, and all were won by away teams. Both last season's finalists opened their campaigns with wins: the runners-up Györi ETO KC proved too strong for HC Podravka in the Match of the Week, while in the same Group B, titleholders Metz Handball won against Storhamar Håndball Elite.
Two matches were also held in Group A, as CSM Bucuresti claimed two points at RK Krim OTP Group Mercator, and Team Esbjerg celebrated an away win against BV Borussia Dortmund.
The first half was on a high level for us, even though we have just 12 players, with the others sick or injured. So, we can be very proud of the first half. Very high, big respect for the girls, but, yeah, in the second half we just died slowly against their energy and qualities. This is natural, but we leave a very big impression from the first half.
[In the first half] We didn't play defence at all; we didn't have saves, but first of all, we didn't have a good defence. We ran out of energy, I don't know where, so at half-time I would say Bojana changed our tactics a little bit. And in the second half, we started to finally play a good defence; we started to make good fouls and not get two-minute suspensions every time, so we started to be a bit smarter. And on that, we could run all the time. So, and of course, when you get confidence in defence, you get confidence in attack after all.
In the first half, we were all on our game—things were going really well for us. Dortmund came back in the second half and presented us with a major challenge. But in the end, we scored the important goals.
I wasn’t satisfied with the first half. We didn’t get into the one-on-one battles. Our defence couldn’t get a grip on the game, and up front we turned the ball over too many times. After the break, our seven-on-six play worked well, but overall I would have liked to see more resistance. We need to be a tougher opponent even against teams like Esbjerg.
It was a good game. It was a good first match for our new team in Champions League. We had a good respect for this game, we prepared us really good for Storhamar. It is hard to play against them, because they run a lot. We had a good defence and goalkeeper, and we are happy to win this game.
It’s fun facing tough opposition, but we would have liked to perform better, especially in the first half. It’s a real struggle when we keep hitting a wall in attack like that. Then we made some mistakes and got punished for them; I think we conceded six or seven fast-break goals in the first half alone. We showed them a bit too much respect in the first half. Things improved a little in the second half, though that was perhaps natural given that Metz eased off a bit.
First of all, I'm very happy that we started the Champions League with a win. We aimed for this. Maybe we didn't show the best performance, but I feel like we knew coming here that Podravka is really good at home, and they were. We made a lot of mistakes, and we are still searching a little bit the rhythm of ours, but at the end, two points are going back with us.
Looking back at the match, I primarily regret that we made so many mistakes at the worst possible moments. That said, we didn't let them pull away or suffer a heavy defeat; we managed to claw our way back and narrow the deficit. Perhaps there is a lingering sense that we could have achieved even more. We weren't playing just any team; we were up against Györ, currently the best team in Europe.
