German sides remain spotless; Barça win MOTW in style
Four away victories and only defending champions SC Magdeburg taking the points on home ground: This was the result of the last Machineseeker EHF Champions League group matches before a three-week break.
We played the huge match we had all expected, in an amazing atmosphere. We had our tactics. We knew Veszprém likes to run, but we wanted to run even more than they do. We had to outrun them. In the end our energy ran out, but we still kept a one-goal lead, and that was the most important thing tonight.
In the first half, we played horribly and started to lose. After about 10 minutes, we lost control of the game — Berlin was much better than us. In the second half, we tried to change something about our intensity, but they took advantage and scored six, seven goals, which made things very complicated. The team kept fighting, but Berlin deserved to win.
We were very close 50 minutes of the game. In the last 10 minutes we lost our concentration in attack — maybe because the team is not tied up, which the opponents took advantage of and broke away with two, three goals. Kielce won from experience. It's frustrating because now we have zero points in the group, but we could just as easily have had four, five points. We have moments when we play quality handball, but in the Champions League it's not enough. You have to play at a high level for 60 minutes.
Dinamo is a very good team, with a lot of possibility to fight against every team. For us, today, we have a lot of luck that our goalkeeper had a good day. He made 16 saves — that's why we had control during the game. What makes the difference between Dinamo and Kielce? Three, four years ago we lost here. Our goalkeeper had only three saves and today we have 16 saves. This makes the diference.
We're very pleased to be continuing like this today. We stayed in the game the whole way, had a good half-time score, and just marched at the end. We were able to utilise the squad and enjoy the atmosphere here at home again. That, of course, makes us happy, since we are still spotless in the Champions League.
We prepared this match to try to stop them in static situations, but actually, we didn’t have the chance to defend in those situations because we made a very bad balance and they got most of the goals in the fast break. The problem we had in attack, with a very low effectiveness of our attack is a perfect storm.
We are disappointed because we wanted more and had high hopes, especially considering the character we showed in recent matches. We proved that we belong among the European elite, but today Barcelona was simply better. We have to analyse everything and learn from it. We know that sometimes these kinds of games happen, but we will definitely come back stronger. We are fighters and hungry for victory.
We played a perfect game. It was a tough venue and a very good team we had to face. Today we were better and deserved to win. We played very well in defence, which also helped us in attack. We should be proud of our performance. Congratulations to the Plock team for their achievements so far and their good play.
We're very disappointed tonight. We didn’t start well and it was difficult to get back in the game. We need to focus on the next game on Sunday in the championship, and in the Champions League group phase we still have games to go to pick up points. We need to use tonight to learn for the next games.
