Sävehof host MOTW; Vipers meet FTC in rematch of final
The EHF Champions League Women 2023/24 heads into an entertaining round 2 this weekend – and Scandinavia takes centre stage. In Sweden, IK Sävehof take on Brest Bretagne Handball in the Match of the Week; in Norway, Vipers Kristiansand and FTC-Rail Cargo Hungaria meet again, 15 weeks after their final at the EHF FINAL4 in Budapest. Remarkably, both Vipers and FTC started the new season with a defeat last week.
It’s our first home game of the season, so I hope we can be our best selves against Brest. We’ll need to be meticulous and also ensure that we are aggressive on the court.
We expect a good match against a good opponent, but we do also expect a victory. Normally Buducnost play very good in defence, and I hope we can run with them and make a very speedy game. It’s always difficult to say how the teams are when we are so early but I expect I close game and hope we can take the win in the end.
We are looking forward to the first Champions League game in front of our fans. It is of course something special to compete against one of the top favourites. We will give Bucuresti a big fight.
We are very conscious of the fact that it will be a very tough fight on Sunday, just like the two previous games that we played in the last season. Bietigheim is a very physical team with very strong players and we need to give all our energy on the court. I believe we need to focus a lot as well on our recovery, both mentally and physically as the time is short.
We are looking forward to playing this game. We face a very experienced team with a lot of experienced players. We have to be prepared in defence to stop their very strong backline, and we have to bring our own strong sides to the court. For us the most important, as always, is to focus on ourselves, but at the same be prepared for what the opponent brings to the game.
We need to keep building from our game in Esbjerg, where we were very satisfied with the concentration, the attitude and the mindset we went into the game with. We have to continue from that and see if we can build a little more. It is a game we have to try to control – Lubin are playing very individually and very fast handball, so we have to be ready.
Krim has a team of world class players who can create opportunities and goals on their own. So it going to be a tough match and many things have to go our way if we are to win. One of them is that we have to control our emotions and accept, that players like Dmitrieva and Radicevic can score goals out of the blue.
We know, we have a difficult task ahead of us against one of Europe’s best teams. In addition, Metz are incredibly strong at home. We will chase our opportunity and believe in our own competences, we can win against all teams if we hit a high level and that is exactly what we are chasing against Metz this weekend.
