Champions League | Handball: Bennet Wiegert and the best years of SC Magdeburg

When the final whistle sounded, Bennet Wiegert didn't have to think long about who he would throw his arms around first. The SC Magdeburg coach approached Yves Grafenhorst and hugged his assistant and childhood friend with such vehemence that one briefly worried about the assistant coach. Afterwards, the two put their heads together and looked deep into each other's eyes, from which large tears of joy clearly rolled.

Surprisingly one-sided

It was an outburst of emotion rarely seen from the two men who have guided the Magdeburg handball team for almost ten years. On the other hand, the reaction was only appropriate: After all, SCM had just won the Champions League title for the third time, after 2002 and 2023. The score was 32:26 (16:12) on Sunday evening in Cologne after a surprisingly one-sided 60 minutes of the final against Füchse Berlin . The victory against the newly crowned German champions and old favorite rivals, who had narrowly relegated Magdeburg to second place in the national title race , made the success all the sweeter.

"I have to pay a huge compliment to my team and everyone involved. Behind us was a season with narrow defeats in the Supercup, the Intercontinental Cup, and the championship final. So this is balm for our souls," said Wiegert, adding: "It could have been a strange season - now it's a great season." And on top of that, the continuation of arguably the most successful era in the club's history: Since 2022, Magdeburg have won the Intercontinental Cup twice, the German Championship twice, the DHB Cup once, and now twice , the most important title in club handball - an impressive record that will forever be associated with one name: Bennet Wiegert.

Used day

In the first German-German Champions League final since 2014 – when Flensburg beat Kiel – both teams started visibly nervous. SCM made an unusually high number of technical errors in the opening stages, which the Füchse Berlin capitalized on. After ten minutes, Berlin's left winger Tim Freihöfer scored for the first two-goal lead of the evening.

Subsequently, Magdeburg got into the game better because they had a clear advantage in the most influential position in handball : goal. In contrast to the semifinal on Saturday against Nantes, when Füchse goalkeeper Dejan Milosavljev made outstanding saves, the Serbian had a very poor day in the final. At halftime, his record showed exactly zero saves. As a result, the Berlin team couldn't play their usual fast-paced game.

On the other side, Sergey Hernandez drove the Berlin team to despair. What the Spanish goalkeeper set up at the back was continued by his teammates up front: Magdeburg led 16:12 at halftime. Even after the break, Wiegert's team managed to contain the Berlin team's attacking power. The Füchse had averaged more than 35 goals per game in the Bundesliga; on Sunday, they scored 26. This was due in no small part to Magdeburg's ability to restrict Mathias Gidsel's range. The world-class handball player, who had dissected every defensive unit for months, looked more human against the SCM defense than he had in a long time.

Magdeburg intoxication

Magdeburg's lead was never seriously threatened again, as they were even more efficient in attack in the second half. Driven by the strong Gisli Kristjansson, who played despite a shoulder injury suffered a few weeks earlier and was the top scorer in the final with eight goals, SCM played themselves into a frenzy and increasingly shattered the otherwise nerveless Berlin team's hope of a comeback. After the second Icelandic player in the SCM jersey, Omar Ingi Magnusson, converted the penalty to make it 31:26, the game was finally decided in front of more than 20,000 spectators – and the celebrations for Magdeburg could begin.

A little later, Wiegert still couldn't quite foresee what exactly that would look like. The only thing that was clear was that he was delegating responsibility for the upcoming party. "I've had to make so many decisions over the past few months," said the Magdeburg coach. "From now on, I'm looking forward to just running after them."