Defending champion SC Magdeburg has once again reached the Final Four of the Champions League in Cologne. In the second leg, the Elbestadt team beat the Polish handball champions Kielce 23:22 (11:13), thus making up for the deficit from the first leg (26:27) and prevailing 4:3 in the subsequent seven-meter throw.
Magdeburg’s best scorer was Omar Ingi Magnusson with six goals. This means that Magdeburg can still win four titles in one season after the DHB Cup and Super Globe.
Magdeburg made an unusually large number of technical errors and initially trailed by three goals. As in the first leg, the visitors’ 5-1 defense caused problems for the defending champions, and the attacking game didn’t flow. “Our problem is not the defense; in the attack: more calm, more control,” demanded SCM coach Bennet Wiegert during the timeout. Magdeburg worked its way into the game, but didn’t take the lead until the break.
After the break, the SCM turned the game around with four goals in a row from Omar Ingi Magnusson. However, the game remained close, Magdeburg benefited from Sergey Hernandez’s saves, but were unable to break away because the aggressive Polish defense continued to allow little. Being outnumbered, the SCM finally managed to take the first two-goal lead they needed to advance (21:19/52nd minute).
In the final minute, the SCM played down the time with a one-goal lead, but Michael Damgaard’s throw didn’t go into the goal – and since Kielce didn’t equalize, the game went to a penalty throw. Hernandez saved three of the six shots there and Magdeburg was in the Final Four.
