COPENHAGEN, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- Denmark's Aalborg lost to Hungarian side Pick Szeged in the European Handball Federation (EHF) Champions League at home on Sunday.
The North Jutland team of Aalborg came into the Champions League group game on the back of three wins in a row, but Aalborg got hit by the reality of a superior opposition.
Aalborg got off to a terrible start with a series of unforced errors in their defense and wastefulness in their attacks. Unsurprisingly, after 20 minutes Aalborg was trailing by ten goals (8-18) and it seemed that the match was over.
Nevertheless, the Aalborg players regrouped and managed to crawl back into the game, gradually eating into the Hungarians' lead and scoring seven times in a period where Szeged only got the ball in the Aalborg net once, making the score 15-19.
The second half began the same way as the first, Aalborg was wasteful and as a consequence did not score for a period of seven minutes. With 15 minutes left Szeged was leading by 9 goals: 21 to 30.
Aalborg made another fight back and did score more goals than the Hungarians in the last quarter, but it was all too little too late and the Danes were unable to avoid a crushing defeat with the score locked as 28 to 35.
Despite Sunday's poor performance which will prevent Aalborg from going straight into the quarterfinals, the Danish champions still have a good chance to play in the eighth-finals because numbers two to six in each group are rewarded with a place.
