After a weak start in defence and a mostly equal first half at Fivers in Vienna, Füchse Berlin put the pedal to the medal after the break - and ran over the Austrian champions in the first leg of the EHF European League Men Last 16 on Tuesday.

Füchse scored a 13:2 run in the first 14 minutes of the second half to close in on a quarter-final spot with a 35:27 away win.

LAST 16, LEG 1

Fivers (AUT) vs Füchse Berlin (GER) 27:35 (15:17) 

• thanks to eight saves of veteran goalkeeper Wolfgang Filzwieser, Fivers stayed close to Füchse in the first half
• powerful line player Tobias Wagner caused many problems to the Berlin defence, and ended up scoring four times, like teammates Eric Damböck and Fabian Glatzl
• Fivers did not score a goal for more than six straight minutes early in the second half though Füchse missed many chances and increased the gap to ‘just’ 21:15
• also thanks to 13 saves of their Serbian goalkeeper Dejan Milosavljev, Füchse ran away and led by 13 goals (30:17) in minute 44
• Füchse line player Mijajlo Marsenic scored six times, a personal best in the European League

Hutecek’s injury setback for Fivers

He was on fire in the weeks before the club’s season highlight against Füchse Berlin. But on Tuesday night, Fivers’ Lukas Hutecek was not on the court. The 20-year-old left wing sat near the bench with a broken finger, sustained during a domestic cup game last weekend. Hutecek, Fivers’ best scorer in the competition with 65 goals, will be out for about five weeks and could also miss Austria’s EHF EURO 2022 Qualifiers against Estonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in a few weeks’ time.