Surprising picture after five match days: Melsungen and Berlin lead the Handball Bundesliga table.
Not champions Kiel, not premier class champion Magdeburg – and not top favorite Flensburg either: The surprise team of MT Melsungen and the crime kings of Füchse Berlin lead the handball Bundesliga without losing points after five match days. The championship promises high excitement this season – also because the big favorites are already weak.
“The level of performance in the HBL is perhaps higher than ever before,” said HBL managing director Frank Bohmann to the “SID”. Seven teams are eligible for the big hit this year.
In addition to Kiel, Magdeburg, Flensburg, cup winners Rhein Neckar Löwen and Berlin, this time Melsungen and the warriors of TSV Hannover-Burgdorf would play “an outstanding role in the fight for the top”.
Melsungen’s performances in particular have impressed experts so far. While the team, which has always been lavishly supported by a local pharmaceutical and medical technology company, has always languished somewhere in the middle of the field in recent years, the current 10-0 points, including the confident 35-30 win in Kiel, have left an impression on the competition.
HBL: Kristopans is shaking up the league
“This is definitely a serious team now,” said Füchse sports director Stefan Kretzschmar in the Dyn vodcast “Kretzsche & Schmiso”: “You get the feeling: everyone has self-confidence and everyone already has their role in this Melsunger team.”
He is particularly impressed by the new playmaker Erik Balenciaga and the 2.15 meter tall, 135 kilogram Latvian Dainis Kristopans, who moved from Paris St. Germain to North Hesse.
“He is three meters tall and moves like Mathias Gidsel (Danish world champion of the Foxes Berlin, editor), to put it exaggeratedly,” said Kretzschmar.
In addition, Kristopans has “a huge gun in his arm”. A secret of MT coach Roberto Garcia Parrondo’s success is that he rotates his team. “That’s the difference to most other top teams,” says Kretzschmar.
But his Berliners also got off to a perfect start to the season. In contrast to Melsungen, which won four of its five games by at least five goals, the Füchse often made things exciting. Once they won by two goals, twice by just one goal.
In the wafer-thin 34:33 on Sunday against Hannover, the capital club was already six goals behind in the second half before a furious comeback and a seven-meter penalty converted by Hans Lindberg at the last second brought victory.
After that we fought really well. “We are happy that we are still unbeaten,” said Füchse coach Jaron Siewert. After five matchdays, the other top teams in the league can no longer claim that.