Győr Save Chances

Slagelse DT have have taken a six-goal advantage for the second leg of their Champions League semi final against Győri Audi ETO. The result of the Sunday game was 31-25 in the Brøndbyhallen of Copenhagen.

Several times in the second half, however, the Danes who won the competition in 2004 and 2005, seemed to be on their way to decide the matter in the first leg already. The hosts were leading by nine goals already on two occasions – at 25-16 and at 27-18. The Hungarians managed to avoid a defeat impossible to equalise at home. Győr got away with a relatively acceptable six-goal defeat at the end.

Fine start from Győr

At the beginning of the match nothing indicated a big Slagelse win. With a fantastic Anita Görbicz leading the squad the visitors shocked the 4100 spectators and thrilled the 300 Győr fans. The Hungarians took the initiative from the start and took a four-goal lead at 6-2 and 7-3. 

Finally, Slagelse – Bojana Popovic and Maja Savic and goalkeeper Cecilie Leganger in particular – began to play their usual game. From then on Slagelse were absolutely dominating for the rest of the first half. First, the home team scored five goals in a row to take a 8-7 lead. They played so well that the Hungarians were not even able to take advantage of a two Danish players suspended for more than a minute. This enabled Slagelse to extend their lead to 12-9 and 14-10, before the score board signalled 16-11 at half time. No matter what tactical manoeuvres Győr coach Kálmán Róth tried in this phase of the game, nothing seemed to help his team.

Győr depends too much on Görbicz 

Slagelse started the second half as they had ended the first. At the same time Anita Görbicz seemed more and more to turn into a "one-woman-army" for the visitors. She was not enough alone this day. Slagelse were able to increase the lead to six goals for the first time at 18-12, to eight goals at 21-13 - and as mentioned above, to nine goals at 25-16 and 27-18.

At nine goals, however, the Slagelse players seemed to lack concentration and as other players than Görbicz managed to contribute to the Győr game at this stage, the Hungarians were able to close the gap. For the second time during the match Stancuta Guiu replaced Orsolya Herr in the visitors´ goal, and it was a good substitution. Guiu performed quite a series of saves towards the end of the match.

Slagelse made the same mistake repeatedly: they allowed their right handed right winger Emiliya Turey to finish the attacks to often but she missed against Guiu.

Only five-goal difference 

As a result, Győr came back from nine goals to five at 27-22 and at 29-24 again. Two Slagelse goals made it 31-24 before Anita Görbicz ended the match by scoring on a penalty. 31-25 was the final result.

"Empty feeling"

"We could - and should - have won by more goals. We got our game working after a poor start, but we missed too many scoring opportunities towards the end of the match and that was not acceptable. Furthermore, it was not okay to let Emiliya Turey shoot so many times from the right wing," Slagelse´s assistant coach Peter Bruun Jørgensen told Eurohandball.com shortly after the match.

"We were not surprised by Guiu´s fine performance in the Győr goals, but our shots should have ended in the goal anyway. Now we have a pretty empty feeling as we know that we could gained more advantage for the second leg. As usual we will go for victory in Hungary as well, so we are not going to spend much time thinking about the advantage taken today," Peter Bruun Jørgensen added.

Görbicz, Popovic and Savic: the brightest stars 

Anita Görbicz was not only her team’s best player this Sunday afternoon in Denmark, but she has also become top scorer of the match with 12 goals, scoring practically half of the goals of the visitors.

Bojana Popovic and Maja Savic were the most outstanding players and top scorers of Slagelse with 8 and 6 goals, while Carmen Lungu also scored 6 times.

The second leg will be played in Győr next Sunday at 14.00.