“It’s kind of nice when something like that stops forever,” said the Norwegian backcourt ace. “But at the moment we’re only interested in winning the cup. We should just enjoy the evening.” Whether the ultimately smooth success could shuffle the cards in the master race again? “It would be nice,” smiled left winger Magnus Landin. “But Magdeburg has an enormous advantage.” With eight games to go, there are at least six points.
Two 13,000 spectators to say goodbye to Hamburg
Around 13,000 spectators flocked to the large circle in Hamburg’s Volkspark on both days. In twelve months there should be around 7,000 more every day – in Cologne, which should become the new cup Mecca for handball players at least until 2027.
“We go with at least one crying eye, but we have to set new impulses for this event,” said HBL boss Frank Bohmann. And league president Uwe Schwenker explained: “Of course, the economy is the main reason. We have the opportunity to play in front of 20,000 spectators in one of the largest multifunctional arenas in Europe.”
In the future, Cologne is the goal for Kiel
The tradition stays behind on the Elbe. Shortly before the finale, several sequences from the last three decades flickered on the video cube. Triumphs in the Alsterdorfer Sporthalle and from 2003 in the Arena in the Volkspark.
“We as a club wanted to write history again in Hamburg. In the future we want to write more stories in Cologne.”
— THW Managing Director Viktor Szilagyi
“It was another experience. The team showed an impressive performance against an opponent who has been playing an almost perfect season so far,” said THW Managing Director Viktor Szilagyi: “We as a club wanted to write history again in Hamburg. In the future we want we’ll write more stories in Cologne.”
Such a move would be conceivable as early as June if the Kiel team beat Paris in the quarter-finals of the Champions League in May. The European premier class has been holding its finals in the Rhine metropolis since 2010.