BUDUCNOST T-MOBILE Open with victory

The nightmare is over. After six defeats in last year’s group phase, Buducnost T-Mobile finally won in the EHF Champions League. The team of Tone Tiselj managed to beat Budapest Bank-FTC by 22:19 on Saturday night in front of more than three thousand fans in “Moraca” hall.

That was the first win in Europe in 17 month (the last victory was against another Hungarian team, Győr), and the first in this competition after 20 month.

It was also the first Buducnost T-Mobile victory in an opening game since 12 January 2002, when the Montenegrins have beaten Valencia. Buducnost are playing without any pressure this year and this weekend they caused tremendous joy for the fans.

Buducnost deserved to win because the hosts had the lead for the whole match. At one point, the team of Tiselj were already up by five goals (16:11), but the Hungarians were able to come back (19:19) and made the finish of the match very exciting. The young team of Buducnost didn’t let the chance slip: Jovanka Radicevic scored twice and Biljana Pavicevic added one goal to secure the win.

The two backs, Marija Jovanovic and Ana Radovic were the top scorers of the game (both with six goals), while Jovanka Radicevic scored five goal. Gabriella Juhász was the best of FTC with five goals, followed by Mónika Kovacsicz with four. Goalkeeper Melinda Pastrovicz made 12 saves in the second half.

7-m parade

The heroes of the victory were the two goalkeepers of Buducnost, Sonja Barjaktarovic and Mirjana Milenkovic. The first made 15 saves including two 7-m shots. Milenkovic was really fantastic saving six consecutive 7-m shots coming in from the bench only for these saves…

The goalkeepers made up for all the mistakes in the attack, and defending was also a key element in the home win.

“I am very happy, especially because we had a lot of problems with injuries before the game. We proved that we can beat strong opponents such as Budapest Bank-FTC with a good fighting spirit of the whole team. If my team mates didn’t play so well in defence, me and Mirjana couldn’t have saved so well. Special thanks goes to our fantastic fans,” said goalkeeper Sonja Barjaktarovic.

Mirjana Milenkovic, who arrived to Buducnost from Serbian Knjaz Milos this summer, reached a personal record by saving six 7-m shots in an official game.

“I am happy to be a part of this team and proud of our game. We will continue to do our best every match because we had a hard work this summer. We proved it against the Hungarians,” said Milenkovic.

Gyula Zsiga, coach of FTC cannot be satisfied with the performance of his team, especially in attack. He tried everything during the 60 minutes, changed a lot of players on court, but his team never managed to take the lead.

“When you miss eight penalties, you cannot avoid defeat. Nevertheless, we had a chance to take at least one point home, but we had no luck. I must congratulate the two goalkeepers of Buducnost T-Mobile: they were the best players on court. We made a lot of mistakes in attack and missed a lot of easy shots. Our defeat was inevitable,” said Zsiga.

The debut of Tone Tiselj was very successful. However, he also knows that Buducnost T-Mobile need a lot more work to become a top team in Europe.

“Both teams are young ones and this explains the lot of ups and downs. My colleague from Budapest and I still have a lot of work to do. Anyway, I want to thank our great fans and the players who did their job in defence. In attack we didn’t play as good as we can, When I arrived in Podgorica, Buducnost was good in attack without a strong defence. In modern handball you cannot win without a strong defence, and that will be our task for the future games,” stated Tone Tiselj.