Magura earn hard-fought win against Lada

In a tight fight, Magura Cisnadie claimed their second home win in the group stage, beating Handball Club Lada 27:24.

GROUP C
Magura Cisnadie (ROU) vs Handball Club Lada (RUS) 27:24 (14:10)

• Olga Fomina opened the score, but it was Lada's only lead throughout the match
• Kira Trusova's saves propelled Magura to a 4:0 run between minutes 17 and 25. The hosts led 12:7 and then were in front by four goals at the break
• Lada's second-half comeback saw them drawing level at 20:20 in the 48th minute, and Magura led by just one goal ten minutes later (25:24), yet goals by Valentina Blazevic and Marina Dmitrovic sealed the home side's win
• Blazevic and Timea Tatar became Magura's top scorers with six goals, while Fomina and Valeriia Kirdiasheva netted five times each for Lada
• Magura have four points after two matches, while Lada have lost all three group encounters so far

Lada denied by Russian goalkeeper

While playing in her home country for Astrakhanochka, Kira Trusova has faced Lada multiple times in the past and therefore knows their players very well. And now the Russian goalkeeper, who moved to Magura last summer, showed her quality against the Togliatti-based team. She finished the game with 16 saves and a 41 per cent save efficiency, contributing a lot to her team's important victory.

Alexandru Weber, Magura coach: "I feel that we had the game in our hands in the first half, and after, in the second half we lost the focus a little bit but we came back in the game and we finished in a good way.”

Valentina Blazevic, Magura centre back: "It was a very hard game, physically and also emotionally, but we really fight until the end for our win. We’ve had a lot of time to prepare for this match and we put effort in this game with Lada and at the end we won and we are very happy about this. For the next game we don’t have a lot of time to prepare because we are going on the road for five or six days, but the most important is to learn from the mistakes we made today and try to fix it in the next game.”

Rostislav Grinishin, Lada assistant coach: "I feel there was a chance to win this game, but unfortunately we didn’t score all the goals that we wanted and we made too many mistakes. We are preparing for the next game and we’ll try to win it.”

Olga Shcherbak, Lada right back: "Today we’ve made too many technical mistakes during the game and that’s the reason why we lost, we will try to learn from today and prepare better for the next game.”