Györ and Brest cruise through; Norwegians claim away wins
After a three week break, EHF Champions League Women 2026/27 is back in action, as Round 7 threw off with four matches on Saturday. In the Match of the Week, the seven-time champions Györi Audi ETO KC proved too strong for debutants HSG Blomberg-Lippe and maintained their unbeaten record in the tournament.
Two Norwegian sides, Storhamar Håndball Elite and Sola Håndballklubb, claimed away victories, while Brest Bretagne Handball were the only team to win at home, defeating CSM Bucuresti by as many as 15 goals.
We are certainly a bit disappointed, but we need to learn from our mistakes today. Respect for Sola for playing in the first half-time. What they're doing, they're doing it very efficiently, but we also made it a little too easy for them. A bit more like it was in the second half. So this is, of course, what we need to improve over the next seven days to make it tougher for them. Then I believe we can really fight with them, because today was not a fight.
I'm happy that we went out in the first half and controlled the match. I'm not satisfied with the second half, but everyone got on the field, we played okay, and we got two points here. That's important to reach the play-off round, so this was a big win for us. Every year in the Champions League we meet a team back to back in one week, and now it's Krim. I think there's a bit of fun in that because now we have to find new plays and do something different in seven days. We definitely have some tactical things to show. Krim's second half today was good, so we know we'll have to stay at a high level to beat them.
I think it's a really good feeling. We have been facing some difficulties, and we've been fighting to overcome them and looking for solutions, as I've said many times. But today, we can take a step back, enjoy the moment and appreciate what we've achieved. That's what I told my staff as well. The girls can also enjoy this performance because we put something really good on the court today. After a game like this, you naturally feel a great sense of satisfaction. But we have to keep going and move forward because more games are coming. That's what I always say: the season is a very long one.
It was a really poor performance from us. As a player, I would say that we feel ashamed in front of our coaches because everything we had agreed on worked whenever we managed to put it into practice. The problem was that we didn't execute it properly. I don't know why, but it was really difficult for us to get into the game today. Everyone can have a bad day, but in my opinion, today was too much. You still have to fight until the very end. We did fight, but we didn't start fighting from the beginning. We will work hard on it and do our best to bounce back.
During the first half we missed out on 12 open chances -and that's just too many. But of course nobody missed on purpose. We have to look at ourselves because we need some more intensity in our game and we must improve our training sessions for that. Although we lost, we do have some good basis to work from and we will.
We played an amazing first half, with great concentration and an almost flawless play, while Nykøbing hit the posts a few times plus good effort by our goalkeeper. That made the difference on a day where Nykøbing had the bad luck of losing a sick Moa Högdahl just before the match. I believe it might be a more equal game when we meet in our Arena.
We gave everything we could throughout the entire game. We had a good first half and found some good solutions against such a high-quality team. However, we missed too many shots, and those mistakes ultimately proved costly.
We didn't get off to the best start, but then showed consistent defensive strength, especially in the second half, and gradually found our rhythm. Congratulations as well to Bruna de Paula on a great performance and a well-deserved Player of the Match award.
