After Saturday’s match between Vive Targi Kielce and Rhein-Neckar Löwen, it is Kielce that are closer to the next stage of the Champions League. Polish team won 32:28 (17:13) and thus have the 4-goal advantage. The match itself was a very good example of how dynamic and changeable a handball match can be. Teams started at the eye level; Vive played pretty good in attack which made the result 8:4 after 10 minutes. The excitement was there from the very first seconds of the game, and it was not only the yellow crowd who was excited – rough foul on Alexander Petersson in the 3. minute resulted in 2-minute suspension for Michał Jurecki and additional quarrel between players. What is more, Belarussian referees put their feet in it and were not the crowd’s favourites after making a couple of controversial decisions. The game was very fast but it brought benefits actually only to Kielce. It was hard to believe that after 20 minutes the score was 15:7. Niklas Landin in the RNL goal was not much help – he did not save even a single shot and came off already in the first half. Szmal also did not save many shots, but when he did, he did it in a spectacular way. At the end of the first half Kielce changed their tune a bit, German team improved their attitude and managed to reduce the gap to 4 goals (17:13).
Second half was the continuation of Löwen’s forging ahead – due to Kielce’s teribble time in the attack, they had only 2 goals to catch up on. In the 37. Minute they equalize at 19:19 and Kielce lost all their previous advantage. However, Polish team did not lose their heads and tried to get back on the right track. Emotions were still in the air and first it was Uwe Gensheimer who got 2 minutes, and then both coaches got yellow cards. The teams surged back and forth. In the end, Kielce started gaining the lost advantage again and for that Chrapkowski and Lijewski must be given credit. Polish champions won 32:28, but even final whistle did not make all negative emotions disappear as coaches Dujshebaev and Guðmundsson still had something to say to each other.
