Vardar breaks Spartak' resistance after 50 minutes
Vardar slomio otpor Spartaka nakon 50 minuta
Macedonian champions Vardar Skopje celebrated their fourth win in the SEHA GAZPROM League. Nine goals difference at the end isn't a real picture of what fans in hall "Dudova šuma" had chance to see in interesting 60 minutes . At the end, Macedonians beat Spartak Vojput 36:27 (15:12). Tired after important away match and exausting trip from Sweden, Raul Gonzales boys clashed with highly motivated Serbian vice-champions who made them problems until the last few minutes.
Agressive in defense with some quick solutions in attack, Spartak mantained lead in the first seven minutes - 3:2. Vardar made turnover with a few saves of Petre Angelov and efficient attacks via strong line-players Marsenić and Stoilov. After 16 minutes, Macedonians were in lead - 10:5. That didn't break resistance of the home team, who made 5:0 series led by Ljubojevic and Djekic for 11:11 only a few minutes before the half-time break.That forced Macedonians to finish first half-time in "EHF CL rhythm" - 15:12.
Serbs had nothing to lose in the second part of the match against big favorites from Skopje. Series of saves by Radule Radulović and classy goals of Čupić and Đekić gave wings to the home team which came on 17:18 in 38th minute.The biggest chance for home team to level result was in 45th minute, when Spartak missed two attacks 6 on 5 to score for 22:22. From that moment, Vardar had absolute domination on the court.
A few minutes later, Spartak's coach Branislav Zeljkovic called time-out to prevent his team of collapse (23:27, 52th), but he couldn't. A bunch of easy goals for Vardar were scored until the end of the match.
Mijailo Marsenić netted seven goals for the winners, while the same score had Djordje Djekic in home team.
Branislav Zeljković, Spartak' coach:
Vardar are an extraordinary team and result shows it. I am not pleased as it is not a real picture of what was going on on the court today. We are not experienced enough to beat Vardar, we were trying to catch them with fast goals but that's not how you do it. Big school for us.
Radule Radulović, Spartak' player:
50 minutes were good but in the end we were not able to keep up with CL' F4 pretenders.
Raul Gonzales, Vardar' coach:
In the first part we were not on our level having troubles with defence forcing us to change it constantly. In second we've made too many mistakes but scored easy goals and won.
Stojanče Stoilov, Vardar' player:
We've started off well but Spartak then proved they are not a team to underestimate. Our quality was in the end however well visible.