Esbjerg and Metz dominant; Györ back to winning ways
Round 11 of the EHF Champions League Women 2025/26 finished on Sunday with five intense encounters. Four of them were played in group A, and after surprisingly losing to DVSC Schaeffler in the previous round, Györi Audi ETO KC got back on track, as they defeated Gloria Bistrita.
BV Borussia Dortmund, Team Esbjerg and Metz Handball also celebrated victories, while Ikast Håndbold proved too strong for the last-placed Sola HK in the only group B match.
We lost the match in the first half. The first half was very bad of us. We let Dortmund do exactly what they are good at, and we lost the duels. In our offensive play we messed up a lot. We were chasing throughout the second half. We are extremely disappointed.
When they changed their defensive play to more offensive, we saw that we hadn't practiced that much. So we really struggled with. But then it was even better that we had such a good first half, so we had a lot of goals to go for. All in all, we are very happy with the win and two points.
After about 10 minutes, we were able to stand tall in our defence, where we also got many saves from Katharina Filter in goal, and they were decisive. Again, we almost scored 40 goals, so offensively we are still putting on good numbers.
In the middle of the first half we missed too many chances. The duel with the goalkeeper was bad for us as she made many saves. In the second half we fought well and gave all we had.
We started the match well and had the advantage until the middle of the first half. However, a series of mistakes allowed the opponent to take a three-goal lead, after which we entered a poor phase of play that cost us dearly. A similar scenario happened in the first match in France. Metz is a team that punishes every mistake and approached this game with maximum seriousness, which was reflected in the final result.
We did not start the match well and allowed the opponent to take the lead, but we managed to find our rhythm relatively quickly. Once we established good ball movement, we were able to score easy goals in attack. We knew it would be a tough challenge in Podgorica, as Buducnost had already shown its quality against Esbjerg and Gloria away from home. That is why we approached this match with maximum seriousness, which resulted in a victory.
I wanna congratulate Györ. We had a very good first half. A lot of errors in attack and the difference was made in the second half when we didn’t score for 15 minutes. But it was a pleasure to play against Györ since it is the best team in the world at the moment. My team worked really hard on the field and I want to congratulate them for the hard work.
It was really nice and cool to play in this arena. The atmosphere was insane. It was a tough game with a lot of good players. In the end we won and I am really proud and happy about that.
We played a good game today, where we were in control throughout the entire match. The defence was strong, which meant we stuck to our plans in shooting, and we were able to restart quickly afterwards and build well on our lead. Overall, we played a very solid match and are happy with the two points.
I think we played a good game in the first 20 minutes, but typically for us, the goalkeeper at the other end performs extremely well — something we’ve encountered in recent matches. Our shooting wasn’t good enough, and then we start going a bit in circles. We can take the intensity from this match with us, and we are very solid in our set attack, so that is something we will definitely bring into our midweek game.
