Despite Romania trying multiple approaches until the final whistle to stop their opponents, Montenegro's pacey and efficient wings brought Suzana Lazovic's squad a 27:25 victory and two new points. They are now in pole position to go to the main round as they already have four points on the board ahead of the last round of matches.
GROUP B
Montenegro vs Romania 27:25 (16:12)
- in a first half full of turnarounds, the Montenegrins held a five-goal lead (7:2) in the seventh minute before the Romanians mounted a full comeback to take a 9:8 lead of their own in the 13th minute, and then the former regained their lead ahead of the break
- right wing Dijana Mugosa scored six goals in the first half and added another two in the second half, leading to her being voted as Player of the Match, presented by Grundfos
- Sonia Seraficeanu found the back of the net on four occasions before the break without missing a single attempt and added a couple more goals in the second half to finish as Romania's top scorer with six
- Florentin Pera changed the defensive system once again in the first half, trying to individually mark Montenegro's centre back Matea Pletikosic with Corina Lupei given the task, but without much success
- Marina Rajcic joined the legendary Jovanka Radicevic as Montenegro's joint-top record holder at EHF EURO with 42 appearances
The Golden Lionesses' spirit prevails
Faster, stronger and hungrier are the first adjectives that come to mind after witnessing Montenegro's win against Romania, who lacked consistency in their performance to compete with the Golden Lionesses for the two points.
Additionally, Armelle Attingré once again played a key role in helping her teammates in their most difficult moments as the experienced goalkeeper made saves when it mattered most, during the first half comeback and throughout the second half whenever Romania tried to get back into the match. Last but definitely not least, Marta Batinovic replaced Attingré late in the second half and she also contributed with a key save in the dying moments to win the game.
It was important that we win this match because it's a big step for the second round. If we compare a match against Serbia and this one we didn't play so well, we had some problems in defence, but it's good this happened now as we can see clearly what is a mistake and maybe we can have in the future that we can solve in the next round and immediately in the next match.
We played good, we didn’t give up. You know we have a new team, we have a lot of young players, seven players first time at the European championship. I’m happy that we didn’t give up 60 minutes and tried to come back in the game, and the first half we found a good way and came back. In the second half, we didn’t have enough energy.
