CSM back on winning track in MOTW; Esbjerg, Metz, Dortmund take away victories
Round 8 of the EHF Champions League Women 2026/27 group phase wrapped up with five exciting encounters on Sunday. Four of them were played in group A, including the Match of the Week, in which CSM Bucuresti made their fans happy following a turbulent week and the change of their head coach, defeating Brest Bretagne Handball.
In the same group, Team Esbjerg took the leading position after beating FTC-Toyota Kovács, Sola Håndballklubb grabbed a commanding win over RK Krim OTP Group Mercator, and BV Borussia Dortmund snatched a hard-fought victory at OTP Group Buducnost. And in the only match of the day in group B, reigning champions Metz Handball won at Odense Håndbold by as many as 11 goals.
Unfortunately, at the end, when they switched to playing seven-on-six, we ran into some defensive issues, and I think we were getting a bit tired by then as well. I think we fought really hard at the beginning, even up until the middle of the second half, and then unfortunately, they came out on top.
We knew that it is a really hard place to play, but we kept our cool, knowing that their crowd will be there behind them with power. We had a really good defence again today, that was deciding, and also we used our chances better.
I think today we were a team, not about one player. We stayed close in defence and even though we had a hard week, we managed to stay focused and with the change of attitude we managed the win. I don’t think that one player made the difference today, all of the players had a good performance today.
Congrats to CSM! I think we had chances that we didn’t take and the defence didn’t work as well as in our home match. We lost one important player, but I would like to also speak about the positives: we scored 30 goals away and the girls fought the whole game.
A very well-executed game. Our game plan was to play at a high tempo in the first half, make lots of substitutions and rotate the team frequently, and that worked well. We then wanted to maintain the same tempo in the second half, and that's when we started to pull away. So I think we were in control towards the end.
Honestly, we are very disappointed because we had higher hopes for today. I think Sola made a great game and they could really use their strength, like always, to run us over. And we tried to prepare for this, but we need to work harder in order to beat them. We are very disappointed, but we will keep our heads up and focus on the second part now of Champions League.
We had a lot of problems due to injuries to several key players. We had only four back-court players available in rotation, but every player took responsibility and we gave everything we had to try to secure the win. I would like to thank our fans for their tremendous support, but unfortunately, we were unable to get the important victory today.
It was a great battle from the first minute to the last, and I am proud of my team. Unlike our first meeting, today we had a little more luck and managed to secure two important points. Our performance in the second half was excellent, and that made the difference in securing this important victory.
We didn't succeed with the bare minimums today. We can't let them play so many fast attacks and we delivered way too many mistakes that they punished to the full.
We gave our everything in the preparation up to this game, as Odense played very well in the first game. It's a difficult place to come and play, so I am very happy that we succeeded almost perfectly with our game plan. Even in the situations that we didn't deliver, we had the luck on our side, so I'm very happy that we could take another step in the top two.
