Veszprem conclude the year with a hard-fought win over PPD Zagreb

Veszprem - Zagreb

In the last match of the year in SEHA Gazprom League Telekom Veszprem have managed to beat PPD Zagreb 28:25 (14:10).Beating Veszprem twice in only a couple of days is not something that happens quite often although Croatian champions were way closer to another surprise than expected.

After first 30 minutes it was +4 with hosts being visibly highly motivated to beat Zagreb after a clear loss a little more than a week ago in Varazdin. Marguc was shining in the first half scoring 6 in less than 15 minutes and there simply was not much guests could do with Hungarian transition being way too fast for them. In the second half however 'Lions' shifted in a higher gear with Skok boosting their chances of another stunner. They have even managed to catch hosts - last time at 25:25, but they simply lacked strenght and focus to once again defeat one of European best teams.

Marguc was in the end best scorer in home-teams's roster with 6, Mikler added 16 saves. Sebetic scored 5 for guests as well as Markovic and Josip Valcic posted a big line in Zagreb's weakened offense with 3 goals and 7 assists.

Silvio Ivandija, coach of  PPD Zagreb:
We are making progress, and I expect we will play better in the second part of the season. I think Zagreb will be much stronger and make problems to other teams. We needed more concentration in todays match to win it. 

Arian Jovic, player of PPD Zagreb:
We haven’t opened the match as we wished and when you do this against the team such as Veszprem, it is very hard to catch them later.  From my view, we have missed a lot and they have scored a lot from six meters and from fast breaks.

Xavi Sabate, coach of Telekom Veszprem:
I want to congratulate to Zagreb but to my team as well, because we had a very busy schedule in the past days.  I always say this is our team, but tonight I will say it’s my team because I am very proud of them. This was 40th match in the first part of the season, it’s 15 more than the past season. At the beginning of the season we knew it will be very hard and we wanted to play the majority of the matches. We knew it will be risky but in the second part of the season we’ll have less matches and I know that my players will be even better in the second part of the season.  Our defence was great today,  it was our 8th match in 11 days. 

Andreas Nilsson, player of Telekom Veszprem:
We always fight hard against Zagreb and I congratulate to them but I’m happy that we could win some precious points tonight. I’m sure we will see us in the next season and our aim is to get to Final 4.