Day 5, Group B: AN Brescia (ITA) v Genesys OSC Budapest (HUN) 14-6
For a little more than six minutes the game was balanced, then in a span of 81 seconds Brescia hit three to go 4-1 up. OSC survived this first blow, Gergely Burian pulled one back 3 seconds before the break, then Dome Dala brought them even closer while they could shut out the Italians for more than four minutes. They even had a man-up to make it even, but not even a time-out helped and soon Niccolo Gitto ‘reopened’ the scoring.
The remaining minutes before the middle break eventually decided the outcome – Boris Vapenski and Vincento Renzuto scored one action goal apiece (in 83 seconds), while the hosts’ defence killed two man-downs to secure a 7-3 lead at halftime.
The third was very similar: for a while, OSC could hold back its rival, netted a man-up for 7-4, did some fine defending, only to concede three more goals in the remaining 3:25 minutes and miss two more extras. And the fourth didn’t differ either – the Magyars pulled two back, so it looked at least fine at 10-6, but the last five minutes turned the game into a thrashing as Brescia staged a 4-0 run to win by a huge margin. What was more telling that the Italian defence offered another demonstration of aggressive and extremely effective play in the back – in the previous two home games their rivals (FTC, Sabadell) were limited to 4 goals apiece, now 6 were allowed to OSC.
How they saw it
Alessandro Bovo, coach, Brescia
“I’m really happy since every match is difficult after the Christmas holidays. We solved many problems since we restarted the practices and what’s even more important than winning here, that we did good defending and that’s a good start of the new year. So I’m happy with the result and the performance as well.”
Daniel Varga, coach, OSC
“In all areas of the game we had only problems. To be honest, we arrived without three key players, here half of our team were sick, so we were not ready for this match. Still, we have to use this game to help our preparations for the next 7-8 weeks which are going to be extremely tough. We need to improve many things, especially our physical condition.”
