Courtesy: LEN
Hungary’s OSC Budapest and Italy’s
Savona topped the respective groups at the end of the first qualification round
in the Champions League. While the four favourites advanced with ease from
Group A, Sintez Kazan fell shy of making the top four in Group B, thus the
Russians are the surprise casualty of this opening phase.
Final rankings
Group A (Savona): 1. Savona (ITA) 12,
2. Montpellier (FRA) 11, 3. CN Terrassa (ESP) 10, 4. Primorac Kotor (MNE) 7, 5.
Vitoria Guimaraes (POR) 3, 6. AZS UW Warszaw (POL) 0
Group B (Podgorica): 1. OSC Budapest
(HUN) 18, 2. Jadran Split (CRO) 15, 3. Jadran Herceg Novi (MNE) 12, 4. Apollon
Smyrnis (GRE) 9, 5. Sintez Kazan (RUS) 6, 6. Enka Istanbul (TUR) 3, 7. EVK
Zaibas (LTU) 0
The top four ranked team’s qualified
for the second round.
Qualifying for the second round
didn’t cause any headaches for the four favourites in Group A, however, the
games played between each other were extremely tight. Montpellier had two ties
(versus Terrassa and Primorac) and managed to beat home side Savona 10-9.
Still, the French came only second as Savona won all the other matches,
including a thriller against Terrassa where they came back from three goals
down to score the winner 69 seconds from time. The Spaniards also had some fun,
they saved their match against Montpellier to a tie amidst miraculous
circumstances – they scored two in the last 55 seconds, the last one came from
their goalie Lazar Andric, with 0:06 remaining on the clock.
The only team with a clean sheet was
OSC in Group B. The Hungarians, runners-up in last season’s Euro Cup did a
splendid job, netted 94 goals and they had only wins by a gap of three or more
goals. Jadran Split finished runner-up, on the opening day they upended host
Herceg Novi 15-10 which turned out to be decisive in the race for the second
place (which grants a better seeding for the second round’s draw).
Since this group featured five
quality sides, one had to fall and it was Sintez Kazan which could not survive
the opening round. It came down to their opening match against Apollon, where
the Russians flew high in the first eight minutes and led 3-7 but the Greeks
had a brilliant run in the second period when they came back from 4-8 to 8-9.
In the third, they could take the lead for the first time and in the fourth
they rushed to a four-goal lead to clinch this epic encounter with 18-15 at the
end. Since neither of them could beat the other three strong sides, the Greek
booked their spot in the next round, while Sintez’s campaign came to an abrupt
end as early as September.
The draw for the second round will be
published on Monday.
For detailed results, play-by-play,
click here. http://len.microplustiming.com/lenchampionsleague/
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