AEK reacted and regained the advantage for the Handball Premier title. “Union” prevailed in an emphatic way over Olympiakos 23-19 in her third final and is now looking for a win to celebrate her fifth championship.
Leading performance by Stephen Madalinich for the “yellow and black”, great again o Matskevich who made important saves keeping the difference at large levels for his team.
Olympiacos collapsed in the second half, looking for an equaliser Friday (26/5) in Ilioupoli in order to hope to win the second consecutive championship.
The match
AEK was the one who managed to take a 2-0 lead in the first two minutes with Olympiakos reducing it with Papavassilis’ goal, but “Enos” reached 3-1 with the formidable Madalinics.
Dombris and Montoro kept the “red and whites” in the match, but Tick’s goal and Matskevic’s interventions again brought AEK ahead 8-6 two and a half minutes before the end of the half.
Olympiacos responded with Passias and Montoro making it 8-8 while Iliopoulos made it 9-8 10 seconds before the end. However, the visitors had not said their last word and Niokas duly executed his penalty and won the game equalizing at 9-9.
In the second half, AEK was sweeping and didn’t need Markević to a large extent since in the offensive part Lemos with the incredible Mandalinic who scored 5 goals managed to escape with eight goals (19-11) forcing the Olympiakos coach to call a time-out .
Olympiacos then went on a quick 3-0 run to cut it to 19-15 but Lemos and Tsepics brought the score back to +6 for 21-16 with six minutes to go.
The Piraeus stepped on the gas and with two goals by Karabourniotis and one by Montoro they reduced the score to 22-19 two and a half minutes before the end. However, in their last attack, the Olympiakos players lost the ball, as a result of which Lemos scored for AEK by surprise, giving the victory 23-19 to “Enos”.
Here are the derby stats
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