Zagreb repeats last season's success with a victory over Meshkov

«Загреб» побеждает Брест, повторяя прошлогодний успех

Meshkov - Zagreb

Belarus champions Meshkov from Brest have failed to reach the victory in their second SEHA Gazprom League season's derby losing to PPD Zagreb at home with 21:24. Interesting is that this was second season in a row in which Zagreb have managed to reach big 3 points in Belarus Brest making this Meshkov's second loss of the season, after the one against Veszprem.

Meshkov were able to dictate the tempo of the match for a little more than 35 minutes when Zagreb have managed to catch breath and start enlarging the goal gap up to +5 (18:13) in 43rd minute. Dainis Kristopans brought a little uncertainy into the match scoring for 21:22 5 minutes before the end but that was as far as hosts were able to go today.

Sandro Obranović and Zlatko Horvat have scored 6 goals each for PPD Zagreb and Kristopans netted 4 for hosts. In the next rounf PPD Zagreb will host Vardar and Meshkov will travel to Strumica.   

Sergey Bebeshko , Meshkov’s coach:

Today PPD Zagreb was stronger. I think that main reason for that is they have more-less the same team for longer time. We do not have teamwork yet. Pavel Atman did not play, Manojlović is not in the right form and that gives us problems on back positions. We’ve tried to compensate it with several attacking solutions but it did not bring us victory today. We’re at the beginning of our way of becoming a real team and I could feel the team feeling pressure of playing in front of home crowd, having winning imperative. However, I’m happy we fought until the end.

Dainis Kristopans, Meshkov’s player:

We were constantly cathing up. In the second half we’ve missed a few clear scoring opportunities giving our rival a chance to enlarge the gap and in closing minutes we were simply nervous.

Veselin Vujović, PPD Zagreb's coach:

I am pleased that we won in Brest against a quality team like Meshkov. This was a game of two participants of EHF Champions League. They are a good team and I surely can't guarantee we'll repeat this success at home. I really appreciate what Bebeshko and Meshkov are doing and wish them all the best in both SEHA Gazprom league and EHF's CL.  

Lovro Šprem, PPD Zagreb's player:

We've played very well from beginning until the end of the match. We knew how good they are with their new coach from analyzing a few of their previous matches. This was an important win because I'm not sure if any team will be able to do that here this season. Now we turn to our next regional league rival - Vardar and CL's matches.