2023-05-17 22:47:59
After a year of absence and a cruel elimination of a goal in the quarter-finals exactly a year ago against… Kiel, PSG won a new ticket for Cologne. Not to renew a stock of scented water but to compete in the Final Four of the Champions League. Brilliant winner in Kiel in the first leg (27-31), PSG renewed the performance by sending the zebras – the nickname of German players – to their green pastures (32-29). Dominating a European handball monument in this way twice is a real achievement.
“We don’t realize how hard it is to qualify for the Final Four,” PSG Swedish goalkeeper Andréas Palicka told us before the match. Ten teams have the ambition and the means to go there but in the end, only four are there. It’s always a big challenge, even for PSG. Luka Karabatic’s teammates have a title of champion of France to defend and he will notably not pass the reception of Nantes on June 2.
“It is perhaps this year, when we are least expected that we will do it”
PSG still have this Champions League to go for. Whatever happens, however, he has fulfilled a first essential objective: this ticket for Cologne. Without him, the season would have been a failure. After the departures of leaders like Nedim Remili, Mikkel Hansen or Benoît Kounkoud, the worst was promised to the Parisians at the start of the season. Especially since they have to do without the boss, Nikola Karabatic, victim of phlebitis since the beginning of the year. Elohim Prandi smiles: “When I speak with my mother (Mézuela Servier, ex-international in the 1990s), from the start, she tells me that it will take, that it may be this year, where we are the least expected that we will do it. And why not indeed?
In mid-June, PSG will go to the banks of the Rhine to finally win this trophy which snubs the club at all levels. PSG will make the trip for the sixth time in 10 years with the ambition of breaking a glass ceiling: the semi-finals. Despite all its stars of the past, Paris has only passed this stage once, in 2017 to smash in the final on a goal scored at the buzzer. It is not yet known what will happen in Cologne on June 17 and 18. Let’s quickly recall the rules of the game: there will meet the four best European teams of the season who will play two matches in 24 hours, the half and then the final.
Two days to play a whole season on nerves and energy, it is also the cruelty of the system. For the moment, we just know that the Germans from Magdeburg who took out the Poles from Plock (30-28) on May 17 will also be part of the party. Thursday, Barcelona should validate the magic ticket against the Danes of Gog (37-30) and defend their title. The last ticket will be played between two giants, the Poles of Kielce and the Hungarians of Veszprem who could not decide in the first leg (29-29). PSG may not be the favorite on the board. It does not matter: when it was, it was missed. So yes, why not this time?
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