Niš becomes Partizan’s new fortress

Serbian title holders Partizan Beograd have decided to play their VELUX EHF Champions League home matches in the 2012/13 season in Niš in order to generate a full house and frenetic fan support in the southern city’s Čair Hall, club officials have said.  

Partizan – who have qualified for the group stage of Europe’s premier club competition for the second time in a row – chose the highly acoustic Čair Hall in Niš as the venue for their home games against Group A rivals. Niš has always been a handball stronghold in Serbia and there is little doubt that raucous fan support will play into the hands of Partizan’s ambitions to do better than last season, when they suffered 10 defeats in as many group matches.

Following their 31:38 loss to Chekhovskie Medvedi in the opening round, Partizan will play their inaugural match against German contenders SG Flensburg-Handewitt, on Sunday, 7 October (19:00 hrs local time). While Partizan’s coach Aleksandar Brković said the aim was to collect at least one win in 10 group matches this season, the club’s president Aleksandar Blagojević underscored just how much they were looking forward to their new home turf in Europe.  
 

New home in handball-crazy city

“We will certainly benefit from going to Niš because Partizan has a strong fan based in this handball-crazy city, which has the best handball crowd in Serbia. Fans in Niš are very educated, they know the game inside-out and there is no doubt that we will get fantastic support from the terraces packed with action-hungry supporters,” Blagojević told Serbian media.
 
He confirmed the club would grant free entrance to fans in an effort to lure as many of them as possible into Čair Hall, which produced a cracking atmosphere during the men’s EHF EURO 2012 in January and is expected to do so again for the women’s continental championships in December.

“This will generate a full house every time we play and I hereby wish to thank Serbia’s state secretary for sports matters, Predrag Peruničić, for helping us put together this project as well as the Niš City Hall for making it happen with their selfless contribution,” Blagojević said.

The other teams in a strong and competitive Group A are Montpellier Agglomération HB, Reale Ademar León and HSV Hamburg. Partizan face a tough task of winning their first points in the VELUX EHF Champions League, but moving 230 kilometres south of their base for home games in the money-spinning competition may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the Serbian side.

7,500 requests for  3,500 seats

Experienced right back Nenad Maksić, who scored 13 goals against Medvedi, said he expected the game against Flensburg to be yet another learning experience for Partizan.

“It would be audacious to promise a result against a team of such quality, they are the best team in the Bundesliga alongside German and European champions THW Kiel. Flensburg are a star-studded outfit and what we should be looking forward to is a great chance to learn and improve,” Maksić told Belgrade daily Sportski Žurnal.

“On the other hand, they conceded 37 goals in the opening draw against Montpellier and that shows they are not invulnerable. But we must avoid falling into the trap of playing that run-and-gun game, hopefully the full house will get behind us and give us the strength to put on a good show in our first home game,” he added.

The club’s general secretary Predrag Jusković made it clear in no uncertain terms at Wednesday’s press conference just how much fans in Niš were craving to see Partizan in action against Europe’s best teams. “We have had 7,500 requests for tickets and we could only sell 3,500 because that’s Cair’s capacity,” Jusković told reporters. “The demand only shows that the club made the right decision to play home games in Nis.”