Athlete of the week
Handball player Cristina Neagu
Florin Orban, 11.02.2025, 13:45
There are 2 rounds left in the group stage of the women’s handball Champions League. Of the 3 Romanian teams in the competition, only one, CSM Bucharest, has already secured its qualification for the quarter-final play-offs. At the moment, Gloria Bistriţa-Năsăud and Rapid are ranking 7th in their groups and need good results in the last games to move forward. CSM are in 3rd place in Group A, after a spectacular comeback. After a defeat at the start of 2025, against the very leader of Group A, the French team Metz, the Romanian champions won the following 3 games. It was not enough to hope for one of the top 2 places in the standings, which ensures direct qualification for the quarter-finals, but it has definitely improved their chances to move into the play-offs.
A 3rd place in Group A would have CSM face the 6th-ranking team in Group B, which could even be Rapid Bucharest. The Romanian champions took an important step in this direction in Bucharest on Sunday, when they defeated the team in 4th place in the standings, Podravka Koprivnica, 31 to 30. The Romanian team’s top scorer was, once again, Cristina Neagu, with 8 goals. She was designated Athlete of the Week by Radio Romania International.
In addition to contributing to the team’s success, in the game against Podravka Cristina Neagu achieved a remarkable individual performance: she scored goal number 1200 in the Champions League, a record for the competition. She is best placed to become the competition’s all-time top scorer, followed by two other veterans: the Montenegrin Jovanka Radicevic, from Krim Ljubljana, with 1,164 goals, and Serbia’s Andrea Lekic, currently playing for Ferencváros Budapest, with 1,063. The race will probably end after this season, as Neagu and Radicevic have announced their retirement, and Lekic is already 37 years old, and has been playing in the Champions League for 18 years.
Cristina Georgiana Neagu was born in Bucharest, on August 26, 1988. In 2006, she joined Rulmentul Brașov, then she moved to Oltchim Râmnicu Vâlcea. In 2010, with Oltchim, she reached the Champions League final. After the team in Vâlcea was disbanded, she transferred to Buducnost Podgorica, with which she won the Champions League in 2015. Since 2017, she has been playing for CSM Bucharest. In 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2018, the International Handball Federation named her the best player in the world. (AMP)
