Good Results in the EHF Champions’ League, Poor and Strange in the European League
In the Champions’ League, things sure went well for CSM Bucharest this time around, their easy victory against Ikast coupled with Ferencvaros winning against Odense meaning that they clinched second spot and advance straight to the quarter-finals. And to think that CSM had started the season by losing against Ikast and after six rounds had only two wins and four losses, which seemed to make obtaining one of the first two spot all but impossible. But then they turned their form around, won all of the following eight matches, and some other results played in their favor as well, leading to this… The problem being that it’s almost certain that they’ll end up facing Esbjerg, who should have no problems against Podravka, and this same duel took place in the quarter-finals in 2022, 2023 and 2025 as well, CSM losing each time.
On the other hand, the final round’s results had no relevance for Gloria Bistrita, who were already certain of the fourth spot in their group and therefore of facing Ikast, the winner facing Brest in the quarter-finals. So the two Romanian teams won’t be facing each other, but while that offers a theoretical chance of both of them making it through, seeing who their opponents are set to be makes it far more probable that we’ll once again have no team in the Final Four. But, of course, it remains to be seen what will happen then, and if we’ll even have two in the quarter-finals in the first place, since Gloria is unlikely to find Ikast as easy of an opponent as CSM found them this time around.
On the other hand, in the European League we had three teams and a single one made it past the group stage, actually winning the group with one round to go, so the last round didn’t matter for them either. And what’s strange is that we’re talking of Rapid Bucharest, who’re only seventh in the national league at the moment, while Minaur Baia Mare are eighth but tied on points with them and with one match less and Corona Brasov are third, but both Minaur and Corona ended up third in their respective groups, surprisingly so in case of Minaur, who were almost qualified after four rounds but then “managed” to lose the last two matches, the first one being against Larvik, who lost all of their other matches. And now Rapid will play Viborg in the quarter-finals and it won’t be easy to get past them, so I wonder if we’ll even have one team in the Final Four here… Or in either competition, considering what I said above.
