Nexe strike back for last season’s bronze-medal match loss versus Eurofarm

Nexe vs Eurofarm Pelister

In what was the duel between two teams that met each other in the bronze-medal match on last season’s SEHA – Gazprom League Final 4 tournament in Zadar, Nexe managed to take revenge for the loss that happened back in September securing a comfortable 29:25 win in front of their home fans washing out the bitter taste left after their opening loss against Serbian champions Vojvodina from Novi Sad. 
 
Nexe opened the match better slowly widening the gap all the way until the end of the first half (15:12). Ivan Srsen was leading the way for Croatian vice-champions offensively along with Fahrudin Melic and Luka Moslavac. Sebastian Henneberg and Oussama Hosni were on the other hand leading Eurofarm Pelister however the main difference makers in this one were Dominik Kuzmanovic and Moreno Car between the posts. 
 
Hosts were able to keep the gap open at three goals all the way until the final quarter of the match when they stormed off to +6 sealing the deal in this one. In the end 29:25 for the Croatian vice-champions who have, after the opening loss to Vojvodina, managed to secure their first win of the new SEHA – Gazprom League season. Ivan Srsen finished the game with six goals for Nexe while Luka Moslavac and Fahrudin Melic added four each. It was also nice to see young Fran Mileta back in action scoring two goals from the seven-meter line. Dominik Kuzmanovic and Moreno Car combined for 14 saves. Mirko Radovic scored five for Eurofarm Pelister while Nenad Kosteski netted four. Oussama Hosni and Sebastian Henneberg finished the game with three goals each. 
 
In their next SEHA – Gazprom League encounters, Eurofarm Pelister will on March 2 welcome Vojvodina and Nexe will a week later host the same team.

Lars Walter, Eurofarm Pelister coach:
First of all, I would like to congratulate the hosts on their victory and a good match. We have significant injury problems. The key moment of the match was when we got 2 suspensions. You simply can’t survive that against a great opponent like Nexe. I am happy that we managed to get back into the match on two occasions. We have a long trip ahead of us, and after that, we have two days of rest, which we will use to analyze this match before traveling to Denmark.

Mario Tankoski, Eurofarm Pelister player:
A well-deserved win for Nexe. We’ll do our best to improve going forward and learn as much as possible from this loss.

Branko Tamse, Nexe coach:
First of all, thanks to Lars and Mario for the kind words. I can say that the match was quite good. We’ve made certain mistakes, and there were a lot of oscillations in the match, both for us and for the visitors. We now have a tough EHF EL fixture against Skjern coming up and we’ll need all the available players to defeat them. Once again, big congrats to Eurofarm on a fair fight here today.

Ivan Srsen, Nexe player:
We were aware that Eurofarm have a very good team and we opened the match very well in defense, which is what we usually do in our home matches. Later on, we failed to use some good scoring opportunities allowing them to get back into it. We’ve also had some really poor periods which is something we have to minimize going forward. It is however important to win these matches as they are fueling us and helping us gain confidence. I feel like we are now ready for Tuesday.