Györ secure quarter-final spot; Danish sides claim away wins
Round 12 of the EHF Champions League Women 2025/26 opened with five matches on Saturday. Four of them were played in group A, as the titleholders Györi Audi ETO KC became the first team to secure a direct quarter-final spot, having defeated OTP Group Buducnost.
Metz Handball and Team Esbjerg also won, staying in second and third positions, respectively. In the only group B encounter, Ikast Håndbold grabbed two points at Krim Otp Group Mercator, so the Danish team also keep fighting for a direct quarter-final spot.
I’m happy with the victory, as we achieved our goal by advancing from the group. We played excellent handball in the first half, but after the break we ran into some problems—perhaps we were unsettled by our big lead. When things could have become more difficult, Jessica Ryde’s saves helped us, and by the end our attacking play came together again. We thank the fans for their support, and I would also like to thank everyone working at the club—I’m proud of this community.
We lost the match in the first 15 minutes. Our defence didn’t come together, we made many mistakes in attack and we couldn’t cope with Jessica Ryde’s outstanding saves. After the break we performed better, but we were only able to reduce our significant deficit.
We had good control of the game. We scored 39 goals, I'm happy with that. I think we had a good attacking game. Henny Reistad was very dominant today. She played like Super Mario in a Super Mario Game. I think we had a good collective strategy in our attacking game. We made Storhamar have few shots, but they had a high scoring percentage. They were also good in attack. We know it's a strong team with individually strong players. Overall, I'm very happy with the game.
We fought and stood our ground and had a good game, but we struggled defensively against a good Esbjerg team in attack. It is tough to stop a player like Reistad who is in such good form.
It was a complicated match for us against a high-quality team. Sometimes, when we are not able to play everything perfectly, we have to know how to win these kinds of matches. We alternated very good sequences, created an early gap, but Bistrița came back. Then the match turned into a very tight battle, with a lot of intensity. We are happy to still be able to hope for qualification next week.
We made some mistakes and lost several balls at the beginning. In the end, even though we played better and faster, we couldn’t come back. They played really well.
The way Buducnost played in the first half was impressive; they really got everything out of this match. We played a fast-paced game and even scored 18 goals before the break, but I wasn’t satisfied with our defence because we made far too many individual mistakes. In the second half we managed to correct most of these and showed the kind of handball our fans want to see.
We can be satisfied with our first half performance, but 17 technical errors against a team of Györ's caliber simply doesn’t fit in. We have a lot of injuries, so nearly 80 per cent of our squad is made up of players aged 17 to 22; it’s still difficult for them to play against such a star-filled team. Still, we learned a lot from this match, even though in the second half we missed quite a few shots.
We truly hoped for a successful outcome. As I announced before the match, we came here for at least one, if not two points. Our primary goal was victory, but we would have been satisfied with a draw as well. Unfortunately, we are leaving empty-handed. I believe the match was decided by small details. We played well on offence, but we hit a slump in the second half where we went without a goal, allowing our opponents to build a lead.
We are very happy with the win. It was a difficult match because Krim are a strong team, but we played a good attacking match. While we had a bit of luck in the end, the most important thing is the result. Regarding the quarter-finals, we aren't calculating the table too much. We have two matches left, and our focus is simply to play good handball and aim for victory in both.
