Metz back to winning ways; Györ and Brest stay flawless
Round 7 of the EHF Champions League Women opened with five Saturday encounters. In the Match of the Week (MOTW), Metz Handball bounced back from their defeat at Györ in the previous round, beating another Hungarian team, DVSC Schaeffler.
Today, in the first half, what was missing were the saves, despite defending well. I’m particularly happy with how we performed in 7-on-6 situations, and our 5-1 defence also worked well. It was great to see the pace return to our game, the pace we’re capable of playing at, and I’m very happy with Tjasa Stanko’s performance after her comeback. Breistøl’s long-range shots were also very important — we’ll need those later in the season — and we managed to try out some new elements too.
It was a very difficult match, and although we tried hard, maybe the atmosphere here got to us a bit. We couldn’t quite show our best today, but I still think it was an entertaining game. When we play against such strong opponents, our job is to learn from the experience.
This was a special match for me. It meant a lot how the fans welcomed me — it’s something I’ll always remember. I’m very happy with the win; we managed to earn two important points in a fantastic atmosphere. We know we’ll need to deliver another strong performance next week to win the home game against DVSC.
We didn’t start well, as we failed to take our chances and couldn’t find a way to stop Metz’s attacking play, so our opponent built a significant lead. With our seven-against-six play, we managed to close the gap on the visitors. We were able to make the game tighter, and I hope that next Saturday we can play an even better match in France.
We prepared for most of their tactical solutions by working on different options for changing our defensive formations. Physically, their players are more dominant — at least most of them — and that’s the key difference. For us, it means we can’t afford to be late in contact, not even for a moment. We have to be ready in advance; these are the finer details that will become even more important in the future. Scoring 30 goals was something we aimed for, but especially in the first half, we conceded too many.
We’re happy that we won — that was our main goal. Many things worked out really well. We managed to keep our tempo throughout the match, which is very important for us. All players performed at a high level, and I’m really pleased with that.
It felt great to win. There are always extra nerves and a lot of distractions around a game like this, but it was truly satisfying to come out on top. We played a really good match and managed to show that we’re a better team than what we’ve shown in previous games.
We’re up against a stronger team, and at times, we show that we’re capable of playing at their level. Unfortunately, we’re not able to perform at our best for a full two halves. We’ll keep working hard to become more consistent at a high level.
We couldn’t have hoped for a better start to the Champions League. FTC is a very strong team with a lot of depth, so it was really important for us to have a solid defence tonight — we knew that was the key to the game. We also managed to find good attacking options, scoring 34 goals. Tonight, the win was the most important thing.
I think the difference was very small in this game. We were side by side throughout the entire match. It was in defence that the game was decided. I think we had our chances, but they managed to hold strong all the way through. It’s up to us now to do even more and raise our intensity.
