Dortmund enjoy stunning comeback against CSM; FTC, Esbjerg and Metz maintain perfect records
Round 3 of the EHF Champions League Women opened with four matches on Saturday. Three of them were held in group A, and BV Borussia Dortmund were the only team to win at home, as a strong second-half comeback helped them to defeat CSM Bucuresti.
FTC-Toyota Kovács and Team Esbjerg celebrated their third straight victories, beating Sola Håndballklubb and RK Krim OTP Group Mercator respectively, and in the only group B match, titleholders Metz Handball also maintained their perfect record, winning at HC Podravka.
We fight, and we fight, but it just won't go our way. It's been like that in some of the games this season. And they are a better team, and I think we're a little tired. But yeah, they are a really good team. So, looking at the result now, we're not disappointed, but when you're that close, you always want to win
Well, I'm very pleased with the win. I think we knew it was going to be difficult against Sola. I think Sola are doing really, really, really well, and we have a lot of respect for coming here. It was just as difficult as we had feared, and I'm very happy with the two points we got today. I think we played a good game, with the mistakes that Sola forced us into. So, it was a tough game, and we're very happy with the two points.
We are absolutely delighted, of course. It just feels great to see how we played, especially in the second half. At half-time we said we had nothing to lose. We then made adjustments — switching to a 5-1 in defence and a seven-against-six in attack. That worked extremely well, and we got into a flow. Bucharest no longer had the answers.
I think, from our side, we had two different halves in this game. The first one is how we want to play: With attitude, strong and decisive. And in the second half, we had problems. We couldn’t fix the problems today, and this should not happen again. Dortmund did well, but we should do better.
It was an incredibly tough match. We had to concede to our opponents, whose greater experience ultimately proved to be the deciding factor. Nevertheless, we fought hard until the very last minute. Personally, I am very grateful for the opportunity I was given, and I want to say a sincere thank you to all the fans who came out to support and cheer for us from the stands.
I think overall in the game we scored 37 goals; we scored 16 goals in the first half. The problem was not the attack. I think we were a bit unfocused and not ready for the duels in the defence that we have talked about. We need to come up with bigger aggressivity in our defence in a game like this, and we could easily have won it a bit bigger. But overall, we scored 37 goals and are undefeated in the Champions League so far, so there are good things, and there are things that we can do better, of course.
We knew before the match that it's never easy to come here and to play good and bad, because Podravka is really aggressive as a team in attack and also in defence. We watched the match, of course, against Györi, and we knew, and maybe we were not ready in the first half to fight with Podravka. We didn't find a good solution in the attack also, and we didn't help the goalkeepers. We didn't, as I say, find the mood. And the second half was better. We were compact in the defence. We run as we expected before the match. In the end, the result is maybe bigger than we expected, and we are happy because maybe Podravka will be able to win here against Odense or Bistrita, so that's nice for us to win here.
Metz’s system doesn't give you any room to slow the game down. We committed such foolish errors — it was unbelievable, the kind of total blackout we experienced, especially in attack. When you play like that in attack, nothing can stop you from playing poorly in defence, too. We'll analyse exactly what happened and how. We lacked energy and strength — I can't say we lacked motivation, because that was there — but it was as if we were completely drained.
