It was an indescribable experience and success for every Fradi fan, athlete and manager, and perhaps even the average sports fan, on Saturday when our women's handball team pulled off another sensational feat to come from five goals down to beat Esbjerg in the semi-finals of the Champions League. The world record attendance, the last-second goal, the ecstatic success will go down in the already thick history books of our club - the only question on Sunday was whether another sensation would overshadow it. That is what we were prepared for, anyway, and we were confident that the girls still had a perfect sixty minutes left to perform a miracle against the two-time defending champions Vipers.

This is the third time in the club's history that it has reached the finals of the most prestigious international competition, and it has finished runners-up both times, first under Gyula Elek in 1971 and then under András Németh in 2002. The latter is also remembered for losing by four goals in Skopje in undignified Balkan conditions after a two-goal success at home, and it was immediately obvious that it would be a different story now, in 2023, in one of Europe's most modern arenas. Setting a world-record attendance of 20,002 on Saturday was guaranteed, as was the fact that we would once again have the support of our fans to build on in a battle like this.

There were smiling faces as the girls entered the arena, and during the warm-up there were more tense, concentrated looks, but when the song Freed from desire came over the loudspeakers and the fans started to sing along, some even hummed the tune. We could have hoped for a start as good as Saturday's, but this time we were stuck in the beginning of the game.

There was little momentum in our attacks at the beginning, the first two goals were scored by the Norwegians, only in the 5th minute we got on the scoreboard with Katrin Klujber's seventh, and we had to wait until the 11th minute for our first action goal. Then Emily Bölk bombed into the goal as a wake-up call, but the Vipers punished this period anyway (2-5).

Our performance improved a bit but we still made many mistakes and after a quarter of an hour we were already five goals down, when Gábor Elek called for a time-out (4-9). Two Fradi goals came quickly, while Bölk played a great game, at this stage our German star was practically leading the team and with the help of our again fantastic fans we started to cling to the Norwegians. The referees' actions also caused us some serious stress, but even so, we got back on their heels by the end of the half.

The break was brilliant, with two seconds before the horn Szandra Szöllősi-Zácsik stuck a goal into the top corner and we went into the fifteen minute break with a slight deficit (13-14).

We started the second half with a Vjahirjeva goal and a Lunde save, and again in no time we had four goals in between, and in the 35th minute Zsuzsanna Tomori was given a red card, which meant we lost one of the most important pillars of our defence. We were visibly confused, the Vipers pulled away with six for the first time and Gábor Elek had to call a time-out again (14-20).

Finally, at minus eight, we managed to limit the increase of the gap, and our main task with a quarter of an hour to go was to get within sight as quickly as possible. Although we mobilized the last reserves of energy, unfortunately we didn't have enough left in the team to make another comeback, we quickly consumed two of the deficit, but then the North came back. In the last minutes we held on and the score was 24-28.

We lost the game, but we can take the pride with us for a long time. Ferencváros are silver medallists in the Champions League for the third time in their history, and although we may be disappointed at the moment at losing the final, in fact we deserve nothing but praise for going above and beyond. Our fans felt the same way, standing and applauding after the final whistle.