Kolding København win big in historic match in Istanbul

In front of a record crowd of 6,000, KIF Kolding København won as clearly as 33:24 against Besiktas MOGAZ HT who celebrated their first home match in the VELUX EHF Champions League at all.

Barcelona also have maximum points after their 30:25 win at home against Orlen Wisla Plock, while reigning champions SG Flensburg-Handewitt avenged their shocking 35:21 defeat to Kolding København last Sunday through a win at home against Alingsas HK.

GROUP B
FC Barcelona (ESP) vs Orlen Wisla Plock (POL) 30:25 (13:12)

Coach Manuel Cadenas, goalkeeper Rodrigo Corrales and right back Angel Montoro, all with a past career in FC Barcelona had to leave empty-handed from their visit to the former home ground, Palau Blaugrana Sunday.

With their present team, Orlen Wisla Plock, they suffered a five-goal defeat, but after a match, in which they were able to put pressure on the Spanish favourites for great parts of the game.

Bacelona had line player Cedric Sorhaindo back in the team, but were still without hand-injured right wing Victor Tomas, and the Catalans were also missing suspended left back Siarhei Rutenka.

This did not handicap Barcelona more than they were able to take a relatively clear win at the end, mainly due to a couple of well-shooting backs, Kiril Lazarov and Nikola Karabatic who scored nine respectively seven times.

In a slow start, where both teams had their trouble creating scoring opportunities, Plock were slightly better at hitting the net, and after the score had been 1:1 for several minutes, the visitors got ahead 5:2.

This seemed to be the wake-up call Barcelona needed, and four goals in succession brought the hosts into the driving seat at 6:5.

Despite several three goal lead soon after this, though, Barcelona were not able to shake off their opponents, and after a narrow one goal lead at half time, this did not change much after the break.

Even though the hosts got up with four or five goals several times, they did not manage to decide the match definitively until the last five minutes.

Besiktas MOGAZ HT (TUR) vs KIF Kolding København (DEN) 24:33 (11:16)

The record attendance in Turkish handball, 3100 was beaten Sunday afternoon, as the Sinan Erdem Spor Salonu hosted the first VELUX EHF Champions League match in history in Istanbul.

Actually, it was almost doubled as 6,000 spectators witnessed Besiktas MOGAZ HT's first Champions League match on home ground ever.

Those 6,000 were far from enough to fill the hall which has a capacity of 16,500, but they were definitely enough to create a fantastic atmosphere around the match, singing almost uninterruptedly during the 60 minutes.

However, they were not able to shake the experienced Danish champions who were in the lead throughout the match, except for 5:5 early in the game.

Besiktas had their Croatian left wing Ivan Nincevic back in the team, but instead they were missing right wing Ercan Asikoglu, and Nincevic did never really get a dominating role in the match.

A strong Kolding København defence in front of a once again well playing Kasper Hvidt formed the basis for many counter-attacks, and Torsten Laen's special ability to intercept the ball gave the visitors even more fast breaks.

As Kolding's established attacking play was also running smoothly most of the time, led on by a sparkling Bo Spellerberg, Besiktas never really got the chance to get into the game.

“This was a good, secure win. We played with patience, and we got to play some long attacks which give fine opportunities to play a lot with the line player, and that is hard for any defence,” said KIF Kolding København coach Aron Kristiansson.

SG Flensburg-Handewitt (GER) vs Alingsas HK (SWE) 31:21 (19:10)

Flensburg got their first points in the VELUX EHF Champions League this season and got a certain revenge for their 14-goal defeat in Kolding last Sunday, as the defending champions booked a clear ten-goal win against the Swedish champions in the Flens Arena.

Alingsas had five players from their squad on the injury list, of whom the experienced back court player Fredrik Larssen was probably the one they missed the most.

Flensburg, for their part, were without their young Swedish playmaker Jim Gottfridsson who is sidelined for eight weeks with his second injury of the season.

However, even without injuries, it is a big question if Alingsas would have had a chance against Flensburg on this day.

After Alingsas had taken the lead at 1:0, Flensburg took over the initiative and were dominating for the rest of the match.

With Thomas Mogensen as particularly brilliant as playmaker, the home team left no doubt about the outcome, and when Mogensen had to leave the court with an – apparently not serious – knee injury after 40 minutes, the rest of the team had no problems finishing the job.

Towards the end, head coach Ljubomir Vranjes could even afford to give match praxis to several of his substitutes.