Dramatic finish sees FTC edge PAUC for Last 16 berth
By the 48th minute of the last fixtures in the group, FTC were still through to the Last 16 phase of the EHF European League Men, only to seem to be leapfrogged by PAUC Handball due to a flawless comeback by group winners Flensburg.
But FTC scored twice in the space of the last 28 seconds against Flensburg to clinch a draw, 27:27, and progress to the next phase, with Alex Bognar’s buzzer-beater goal being the difference between progression and elimination.
Valur took a 35:33 win over Ystads IF HF earlier in the evening. Still, the Swedish side held the tiebreaker between the two teams due to their 32:29 win in the first match, clinching the second place in the group, while the Icelandic champions finished third.
In the end it was a good game; even if we lost. We had out season's worst first half but we improved a lot in the second half so happy with it even despite the loss.
I think the team had a big game tonight, they played with a lot of passion, concentration and control because it was not easy to increase this score. We depended on the results of others. I thought Flensburg could really win in Hungary, I was wrong. In any case, we missed a victory during this competition. I believe that with 8 points we must be the first team to not qualify but that will not console us.
By the end, I was a little tired; it was important that Kristóf Győri got into the game well. We don’t really know how, but we qualified. We are incredibly happy!
Today we had some up and downs in our game, some good periods and bad. In the beginning we did not find good solutions in attack, we lost one against one situations in defense. Then we got back, with the help of Buric’s saves. We are disappointed, we gave everything but it did not work for us today. Congratulations for Ferencvaros, it was really important for them.
