In the fourth round of the Champions League, DVSC SCHAEFFLER will play at Odense Handbold’s home.

The Odense Handbold-DVSC SCHAEFFLER Champions League match starts at 4 p.m. on Saturday in the Sydbank Arena. Our opponent finished second in the Danish league last season, Esbjerg proved to be better in the final and became the champion. Odense Handbold was founded in 2009 and won the Danish championship twice (in 2021 and 2022) and the cup once (in 2021). This is their fifth season in the Champions League, they reached the quarter-finals twice (2018/19 and 2022/23), and last season they were eliminated against Győr in the battle for the top four. The Sydbank Arena in Odense can accommodate 2,256 spectators and hosts handball and badminton matches, as well as concerts and other events.

The head coach of Odense is the former 149-time Norwegian national handball player Ole Gustav Gjekstad, who also made his mark as a coach with Larvik and Vipers Kristiansand, with whom he ended the previous three Champions League seasons with a gold medal! He won ten Norwegian league titles with Larvik and five with Vipers, this is his first season at Odense. His assistant coach is Mark Strandgaard, the goalkeeper coach is the former excellent Norwegian goalkeeper, Ole Erevik.

A total of thirteen players were invited to the national team meetings in October, four Danes, five Dutch, three Norwegian and one Swedish national team member, which is a good description of the team’s strength. We may be familiar with Elma Halilcevic in the left wing position, who crushed pepper under the noses of our goalkeepers last season as a Nykobing player, but the names of the Dutch right-winger Dione Housheer, the Danish manager Mie Hojlund or the also Danish goalkeeper Althea Reinhardt also sound good in European handball. In the hunt for domestic points, they started the season with four confident victories, even in their closest match they won by seven goals, while in the CL they knocked out Buducsnost after the defeat against CSM Bucharest, in Podgorica, and won at Brest’s home.