Dinamo through, Aarhus out in dramatic finish to group phase
Dinamo Bucuresti grabbed their last chance to advance to the main round of the EHF Champions League Men 2026/27 as the group phase came to a dramatic end on Thursday night. The Romanian side got the win they needed against already eliminated Montpellier Handball (36:26), and saw rivals SAH - Aarhus coming up just short in the closing minutes of the simultaneous match against Barça, 30:27. Those results mean Dinamo overtook Aarhus into second place behind group E winners Barça. Both Dinamo and Aarhus finished on five points, but the Romanian side won the direct comparison.
Elsewhere, Sporting Clube de Portugal added two more points to their tally for the main round with a 37:35 win against GOG in Denmark to close group D, where OTP Bank - PICK Szeged defeated IFK Kristianstad 31:26. Also, Füchse Berlin reached the 40-goal mark in a 40:33 win over RK Partizan AdmiralBet, which didn't affect the final standings of group A.
Everything wasn't perfect but still we got around the game picture that we wanted. Now we just look forward to coming from behind in the main round group. It will be a tough one — six amazing teams in a very tight group where we are starting from position six and have to work our way up, hopefully for a quarter-final. That's going to be a hard job but we look very much forward to all those challenges that we have ahead of us.
In the first half, we fought a lot and played very good in attack, especially; the defence also was very good. But we were a little bit tired in the second half, and it's because they played better than us in the second half. But we have to be proud, because I think we are improving the team little by little.
We are satisfied with our performance, and I think we played a very good game. However, we can’t be satisfied with our efficiency in the first half. We missed too many big chances, which allowed Sporting to take the lead. Our level in the second half, particularly when we had the ball and were attacking, was perhaps the highest it has been all season. We scored 24 goals in the second half, so there are many things we can be satisfied with, but our efficiency isn’t one of them.
It is great to progress with the maximum number of points. It was a tough and demanding game, especially in the second half. I’m very happy that we managed to secure the win today.
It was important for us to finish the Champions League campaign with a strong performance. IFK Kristianstad fought hard and made it difficult for us, particularly towards the end, so we had to stay focused until the final whistle. We can be satisfied with the win and will now turn our attention to the European League in February.
We fought hard to get back into the game towards the end, but unfortunately, we left ourselves with too much to do after allowing Szeged to build a lead. We showed good character in the final stages, and that is something we can take with us. We would like to thank our supporters for their fantastic backing throughout this Champions League campaign. Now we will learn from this experience and turn our focus towards the European League in February.
It’s really disappointing. In many ways, I think we delivered a good performance, but Barcelona are an incredibly strong team, particularly when it comes to forcing technical errors, and we fell into that trap too many times. There are a lot of positives we can take from the match. We have filled this arena several times and it’s been fantastic to see so many young people, families and local clubs coming together to support us. We have helped bring the handball community in this region closer together, and that’s something to be proud of.
We knew they were a very tough team to beat, but at the end the most important thing were the two points. We had to defend a lot of minutes against seven, as we expected, but even though the match was very close.
We began this competition with a win in Bucharest, but the rest of the competition was a big disappointment. I don't want to talk about our injured players, we put out a competitive team. In defence we were solid and coherent, but we lost the ball 17 times, which allowed them many counter attacks.
I would never have imagined to come here and produce such a complete all-round performance. Montpellier had problems putting out a competitive team, we also had three players with problems. We lost control of the game for two minutes when we conceded three quick goals with an empty net, but overall we controlled the match and stuck to our game plan.
