Kiel's victory opens Round 2

The second easy victory in the second CL match: THW Kiel won away at the Norwegian champion Drammen HK. The Germans dominated once again after beating Skopje at home and this time took the two points with a 39:29 (22:15).

“We played well despite the hard Bundesliga match on Sunday against Hamburg. We could also save some energy, so everything looks quite perfect,” coach Alfred Gislasson said.

Key players, such as Stefan Lövgren or Marcus Ahlm didn’t have to play and Nikola Karabatic was also there for a case of emergency. The others – Zeitz, Lund and Anic – had more playing time instead.

Drammen had the lead only once during the whole game – at 1:0. The best THW players were the wingers Dominik Klein and Vid Kavticnik, who scored all together 15 goals. After the 6:2 everything seemed to run perfect for Kiel, but then Drammen reduced the distance to 6:7. Nevertheless, when Thomas Larsson, the best player of the Norwegian champions so far, received an early red card (at 13:8), the rest was easy work for THW.

After the break and the 22:15 halftime score it was obvious that Karabatic, Ahlm and Lövgren would stay on the bench. The outstanding Thierry Omeyer was replaced by the other goalkeeper, Andreas Palicka, who made his CL debut.

After a 26:17 Kiel didn’t play as focused as before, but they knew that they had won. At 30:20 (40th minute) the gap was ten goals for the first time. THW kept it until the end. With now two victories Kiel can prepare for the next decisive CL match in Barcelona on 19 October.

The top scorers in Norway were THW’s Dominik Klein (8 goals) and Drammen’s Nordhagen (7 goals).