After four unbeaten matches in a row, Elverum’s series of success in the EHF Champions League Men came to an end Thursday in the Match of the Week against Montpellier.
The strong French side took their fifth straight victory and remain on top of the group. Montpellier’s Portuguese left back Gilberto Duarte was awarded Player of the Match after scoring five times in the one-sided encounter.
MOTW: Elverum Handball (NOR) vs Montpellier HB (FRA) 30:37 (15:20)
- while Elverum remain on eight points, Montpellier are on 11 points as the group phase reaches the halfway mark
- already the first half was a lesson in efficiency for Elverum, as almost every attack of Montpellier ended with a goal
- the Elverum goalkeepers, Emil Kheri Imsgard and Thorsten Fries, did not stop any of the 20 Montpellier shots before the break
- it took Montpellier only 11 minutes in the second half to extend the gap from five to 10 goals: 29:19
- four Montpellier players scored at least five times, led by Hugo Descat with nine, while Julien Bos had six to raise his tally to 40
- Dominik Máthé scored seven goals for Elverum
An Argentine makes Montpellier happy
Usually, when you think of South American players at Montpellier, you have Diego Simonet in mind, the first and so far only non-European MVP at a EHF FINAL4 – in 2018. In the MOTW on Wednesday night, however, another Argentine player made the headlines: line player Lucas Dario Moscariello. Having scored just three times so far this season, the 29-year-old former Cuenca player netted five times and almost triples his season tally to eight.
We played a good match in defence, we stayed strong all the way. We knew that Elverum play really fast, so we focused on defence.
It was good game, Montpellier are a great team. They had a good defence. Sadly for us we were not able to put the same defence and bring our goalkeepers in better positions. We are disappointed because today we were too far away.
