After a year of absence and a cruel elimination of a goal in the quarter-finals exactly one year ago against ... Kiel, PSG won a new ticket to Cologne. Not to renew a stock of perfumed water but to play 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 the German players - to their green pastures (32-29). To dominate a European handball monument twice is a real achievement.
"We don't realize how hard it is to qualify for the Final Four," PSG's Swedish goalkeeper Andreas Palicka told us before the match. Ten teams have the ambition and the means to go but in the end, only four are there. It's always quite a challenge, even for PSG." Luka Karabatic's teammates have a France championship title to defend and he will not pass the reception of Nantes on June 2.
"It may be this year, where we are the least expected that we will do it"
PSG still have this Champions League to go for. Whatever happens, however, he fulfilled a first and most important objective: this ticket to Cologne. Without him, the season would have been a failure. After the departure of cadors like Nedim Remili, Mikkel Hansen or Benoît Kounkoud, the worst was promised to the Parisians at the beginning 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 talk with my mother (Mézuela Servier, ex-international in the 1990s), from the beginning, 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?
Mid-June, PSG will go to the banks of the Rhine to finally win this trophy that snubs the club at all levels. PSG will make the trip for the sixth time in 10 years with the ambition to break a glass ceiling: the semi-finals. Despite all its stars of the past, Paris has only gone beyond this stage once, in 2017 to crash in the final on a goal scored at the buzzer. It is not yet known what will happen in Cologne on 17 and 18 June. Let's quickly recall the rules of the game: there will be the four best European teams of the season who will play two games in 24 hours, the half and the final.
Two days to play a whole season on nerves and energy is also the cruelty of the system. For the moment, we just know that the Germans of Magdeburg who took out the Poles of Plock (30-28) on May 17 will also be celebrating. On Thursday, Barcelona should validate the magic ticket against the Danes of Gog (37-30) and defend its 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 of the plateau. It doesn't matter: when he was, he missed it. So yes, why not this time?
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