A first warm-up for the season

News

The context:
Late Wednesday afternoon, Paris Saint-Germain Handball took part in their first preparatory match for the 2019-2020 season. With new faces Vincent Gérard, Gudjon Sigurdsson and Kamil Syprzak, Les Rouge et Bleu went to Sparkassen-Arena to challenge Kiel in a friendly match that looked a lot like a big European clash!

The match:
It is the Zebras who began the stronger. Our team working well in attack, but came up against an imperiuos Niklas Landin in the home goal (5': 5-3). To overcome the last line of the Danish defence, Luc Abalo's magic was needed and he duly obliged, producing a magnificent roucoulette to find the back of the net (12': 7-6). The opposing and reset the scores (14': 7-7) before turning the situation around (22': 10-11). The fact that Raul Gonzalez's men got back in the game was also thanks to Rodrigo Corrales. The Spanish goalkeeper - despite taking a blow to the head at the beginning of the game - turned in an excellent performance and put the German attack in difficulty, leaving the sides at level pegging going into the break (14-14).

In the second half, Les Rouge et Bleu tried to fend off the home side's attacks, but the task was a difficult one against a team coming to the end of its pre-season preparations (37': 19-16). The capital club lost possession plenty of times and missed a number of shots, while on the other side of the field, the Kielers got the better of our rear-guard, despite Vincent Gérard's various saves and parries (41': 22-20). However, Nikola Karabatic and his partners are never far from drawing level. In particular, they had Nedim Remili (45': 22-21) and Lucio ready to maintain the suspense (49': 26-23). But in the end, it proved a bridge too far (55': 31-26) and Paris Saint-Germain Handball had to accept defeat in their first hit-out for the (34-30). On Thursday, our players will travel to Denmark, where they will face Aarhus on Friday and Holstebro on Sunday.

(Credits: J. Azouze/PSG)