It is all or nothing this week for the eight teams eyeing a spot at the EHF FINAL4 2022 in Cologne in 18/19 June. The second leg of the quarter-finals determines which four teams are left in the race to the EHF Champions League Men 2021/22 title.
While Barça and Lomza Vive Kielce, both after away wins in the first leg, as well as Telekom Veszprém HC, following a big home win, look favourites to advance from the quarter-finals, the fourth tie between THW Kiel and Paris Saint-Germain HB is open after last week’s draw in Paris.
The field for this year’s EHF FINAL4 could be identical to the one from 2015, when Barça, Veszprém, Kielce and Kiel appeared at LANXESS Arena in Cologne.
QUARTER-FINALS, LEG 2
Aalborg Håndbold (DEN) vs Telekom Veszprém HC (HUN) – first leg 29:36
Wednesday 18 May, 18:45 CEST, live on EHFTV
- Veszprém ended Aalborg’s series of seven consecutive CL wins in style with a dominant performance in the first leg
- Veszprém have been unbeaten for five CL matches, including last week’s win and the win and a draw in the play-offs against HC Vardar 1961
- Aalborg won two CL matches this season by at least eight goals – the margin they need to advance: against Zagreb 34:24 and Montpellier 36:28
- Veszprém left wing Dejan Manaskov: “We should not worry too much about Aalborg; we need to focus on ourselves. We should play as if nothing happened last week, forget the seven-goal advantage. That is our only chance”
- Veszprém can qualify for their seventh EHF FINAL 4 (including final appearances in 2015, 2016 and 2019); Aalborg’s for their second (after reaching the final in 2021)
- the top- and third-ranked top scorer of the CL meet in this game: Felix Claar (85 goals for Aalborg) and Petar Nenadic (82 goals for Veszprém)
We made it very difficult for ourselves by losing with seven goals last week in Veszprém. But now we play at home with a lot of confidence and believe that we can do better and really want to show that last week’s result is not how we wanted it to turn out. We really want to go back to Cologne.
After the first game, we know that we need to stay calm. Probably they will attack us hard, we play at home so emotions will get really high and we want to start as strong as possible from the very first minute.
