“It’s up to us to make it a handball festival”

Both teams are unbeaten so far, both are aiming for Champions League qualification, and both want to take the points in the direct duel of the currently best German teams. Everything speaks for a duel at eye level

“Of course I’m looking forward to this game. It would be bad if it wasn’t like that,” said SCM coach Bennet Wiegert before the game on Saturday (8 p.m.). “The two teams that are performing best at the moment and perhaps also making the most consistent impression meet. Now it’s up to us to turn it into a real handball festival.”

Meanwhile, a look at the statistics underlines the top values of the two clubs: With 98 saves in ten games and a rate of 31.61 percent, Sergey Hernandez is currently one of the top goalkeeper trio in the league. Flensburg’s Kevin Möller is not far behind with 76 blocked balls and a catch rate of 31.15 percent with one game more. Together with Benjamin Buric, he forms one of the strongest teams between the posts, which still overtakes the Magdeburg duo in terms of saves.

While SCM has conceded the fewest goals so far, Flensburg has scored the most goals, with coach Aleš Pajovič’s team being particularly successful on the counter-attack.

With all the statistics, however, one thing is clear: Every game has its own challenges. “Everything that happened before doesn’t matter after kick-off. It remains to be seen whether we can put up such a strong defense against Flensburg and whether they can get their good offense through against us,” Wiegert classifies. “We know what a difficult task awaits us – but that applies to Flensburg just as much.”