PSG Handball defeated Nantes (35-32) who had long mistreated the French champions in their Coubertin lair on Sunday in the Starligue. Trailing by seven goals (22-15), the Parisians were heading towards a first setback in the Starligue on the fifth day. Their dream of repeating a season with 30 victories in as many days, as in 2022, almost evaporated. “We didn’t panic,” appreciates Nikola Karabatic whose team is back at the top of the standings in Montpellier and Nîmes. “We made up the delay little by little. We couldn’t do worse: we had to fight and keep moving forward.”
Nantes collapsed at the end of the match, allowing the capital club to get back in front with less than four minutes remaining (31-30, 57th). And the Polish pivot Kamil Syprzak did not tremble from seven meters to offer the break to his partners (34-32, 60th).
Previously it was rather the pivot of the “H” Théo Monar who had magnetized the balls in front of the Parisian zone where he showed total precision (9/9 at half-time). “We got off to a very bad start to the match, we got into trouble,” notes “Kara”. “(Center half) Ovnicek played very well with (Théo) Monar, they found easy solutions in our defense.” Indeed, the 22-year-old international (11 caps) had scored almost half of Nantes’ goals midway through the match (19-14) when Grégory Cojean’s men broke away thanks to a 6-0 conceded by PSG .
The match took a turn for the worse when the visitors posted a seven-goal lead (22-15). “At seven plus, you believe in it, you believe in it and everything turns out in their favor,” breathes Thibaud Briet from Nantes. “We miss shots and we lose stupid balls.”
And who knows if the Parisians would have returned to the match without his temporary exclusion (36th, 22-16)? Tender, the 23-year-old left-back irregularly stopped a counterattack from the Karabatic gang. His two minutes of absence – and at six – were costly: Raul Gonzalez’s players took advantage of their numerical superiority to make up part of their deficit with a 3-0 series. “We were in the match, we had done a good job and at one point, we lost control ourselves,” rehashes HBC Nantes coach Grégory Cojean, while observing that “no penalty was whistled » for his team (compared to three for PSG).
In the capital, his men missed the opportunity to make up for the point left at home in the draw against Limoges last week: “We had the match in our hands and we did not manage to take it.”
