Viborg Close In

Danish Men’s Champions League debutants, Viborg HK, are just one step from reaching the Group Stage after winning 35-23 at home against Turkish champions, Besiktas Istanbul. The second leg of the qualification round will be played in Turkey.

Besiktas were only able to keep up with Viborg in the first 7 or 8 minutes on Wednesday night in the Viborg Stadonhal. After this, the 1,111 spectators saw the home team dominate – goalkeeper Emil Jungmann was almost impossible to beat for the visitors. That was one of the main reasons why the hosts managed to increase their lead through the rest of the first half and the half time score was 19-10 for Viborg. 

Viborg continued to dominate after the break and managed to increase their lead to 16 goals when the players lost concentration and missed quite a few opportunities. Nevertheless, the hosts managed to complete a 12 goals win, which ought to be more than enough before the second leg in Istanbul on 7 September.

Cautious coach

In spite of the big difference, Viborg coach Søren Hildebrand was still cautious when talking about the chances of advancing to the group stage.

“Of course, we should not lose our 12 goal lead in the second match, but we still cannot be sure what Besiktas may find out for next Saturday. I think that we have to show respect and be humble and say that nothing has really been decided yet,” Søren Hildebrand told Eurohandball.com after the match.

“It was a bit annoying, of course, that we missed as many opportunities in the second half as we did, but on the other hand it is easy to understand that the players lost some concentration at that point. They were extremely motivated before the match, not least because we did not really know our opponents.

"We played a really great first half and as the players saw that they were better than there opponents, it was natural that they lost concentration. However, it was one of those matches where we should have scored over 40 goals,” commented the Viborg coach after his team’s first Champions League match ever.

Viborg’s new Hungarian playmaker, Gábor Császár, was the top scorer of his team with 7 goals.