Skjern and Flensburg make it to the quarter-finals
Three teams could win group II before the final matchday of the main round. Finally, Danish side Skjern finished on top after winning at Velenje to book their quarter-final ticket. Flensburg took a 45:26 away win against Silkeborg to win group III, while Sporting won their seventh consecutive European League match.
We're delighted with the win. That always gives you confidence - especially after a home win. We improved in the second half. It was important that we had already clearly pulled away from Zabrze at the end and they couldn't get back into the game. We won the game as a team today.
I'm very proud of my team after this performance. Nexe is an amazing team and club, so we needed to perform at our top level, which we managed to do tonight. We knew that we needed to improve from the last match against them, especially our shots from the wings against an amazing goalkeeper. We also managed to defend quite cleverly, even though we had problems against their line players in the beginning.
Despite the defeat, we left the court with our heads held high. We managed to get into the top sixteen teams of this competition, which is a great success. Today we suffered our first European defeat in our home hall and I think we represented Slovenian handball well in Europe.
Everyone expected the match in Velenje to be easy, but the Gorenje team, despite its youth, is of very good quality. The first half was very even, but in the second half we showed a different approach. I congratulate the Gorenje Velenje team on the European season and with them best of luck in Sunday's derby.
I think we played an okay first half. Maybe we let them score too many goals. We played really, really bad in the second however. It’s frustrating, as we were hoping to play a better game.
It was overall a good match for us. First half was a bit too much chaos for my taste. However, we were on the required level focus-wise from the very beginning of the second giving Kevin [Møller] a good chance to deliver a strong performance which he definitely did with 23 saves in the end. That was the key. We can be happy about the way we performed in the second half, and we're eager to find out who we're going to play against in the next round.
I want to apologise to our fans who came today and made this amazing atmosphere. I take the full responsibility for the loss. I am very sad that my players did not understand the game plan - we made a lot of mistakes and it is my fault. Also, I am angry that we did not show attitude. I can understand errors, I can understand when players make mistakes in a game plan or in a scheme, but I do not understand why we do not show attitude. We will work hardly on that, and I want to say to our fans who came today that they will not see another game like this.
