Handball: Chartres – Montpellier, a poster to end the year at the Coliseum

At the end of a first part of the season which will perhaps leave them with regrets, when we know that two additional victories would have allowed them to move to sixth place, the Chartrains welcome Montpellier this evening at the Colisée. Is the feat within the ropes of this rather unpredictable CCMHB team? Elements of response…

Improbable on paper…

We’re not going to lie, on paper, there is a huge favorite, and it’s Montpellier. The Hérault club, fourteen times champion of France, does not compete in the same category as Chartres, as the economic balance of power clearly illustrates (8.9 M€ budget compared to 4.6). The MHB has a host of very high-level players in its squad (Diego Simonet, Valentin Porte, Ahmed Hesham, Karl Konan, Rémi Desbonnet, etc.) and very rarely loses against less strong players than him.

This season, the team now coached by Erick Mathé, the successor of Patrice Canayer, has only lost to Nantes (29-26) and Paris (29-23), the two opponents which precede it in the ranking. She has also just conceded a draw at home, against Toulouse (28-28). For the rest, the Southerners held their ground and built their success around a very impressive defense, by far the best in the championship (26.3 goals conceded on average). And this despite serious injuries to senior players (Skube, Villeminot).

Montpellier’s last real poor performance dates back to November 2023, with a draw at home against Saint-Raphaël, at the FDI Stadium. With PSG, MHB remains to this day the only team from which Chartres has never scraped a single point: eleven Starligue matches, eleven defeats. Knowing that the Héraultais are playing for the title, and that they already no longer have the right to make mistakes, it would be a real achievement if the Euréliens, still deprived of Quentin Minel, managed to grab even a draw. before going on vacation.

…but you never know!

If surprises are quite rare in handball, they are not non-existent either. And Chartres is well placed to know it. Last season, when no one was giving their all against Nantes, the CCMHB achieved the feat by snatching a draw at home, at the Jean-Cochet hall (28-28). The previous season, it was Paris who faltered in Eure-et-Loir and who escaped at the last minute, at the very last minute, after being behind (32-33).

Shaking up Montpellier, for a team of the caliber of Chartres, is difficult, but not impossible either. In November, Dunkirk, for example, achieved this by only losing by two goals at the Stade de Flandres (22-24). To trap a big guy, there are not fifty solutions: sublimate yourself and take the public on the luggage rack (2,800 tickets sold). “You have to play a perfect match and hope that the opponent has an average match,” Nebojsa Stojinovic, the Chartres coach, often reminds us in such a situation.

If Milan Bomastar, author of 18 saves last weekend against Aix (34-29 victories), remains on his path, may the duettists of the back base Yvan Vérin and Vinicios Carvalho continue to send pralines in all directions, and Paolo Moreno and Hugo Jund are showing their claws in defense, so you never know. Chartres, in any case, has nothing to lose.