Iulia Curea’s first EHF Champions League match since taking charge of CSM București is a rematch with Brest Bretagne Handball, the team that beat the Romanian club 40–25 on November 7. The teams meet again at Sala Polivalentă on Sunday, November 15, at 5 p.m. in Bucharest and 7 p.m. in Dubai. CSM announced on November 10 that the club and Bojana Popović had agreed to end their collaboration and that Curea would take over as head coach. A domestic win over Corona Brașov followed on Wednesday. The European assignment gives Curea an immediate opportunity to address the problems Brest exposed in France.

The return game starts with the group standings as they are, rather than an aggregate score to overturn. Brest have 10 points from seven matches and sit third in Group A. CSM are fourth with six from seven, having won three and lost four. A Romanian win would halve the gap to Brest with six matches left for both. A French win would take Brest six points clear of CSM. Those are the immediate consequences of the result, and they help put the 15-goal difference last Saturday in perspective. Its tactical lessons carry forward, while the next two points are available independently.

What Brest did in the first meeting

Valeriia Maslova scored first from distance for CSM, but Brest led 6–2 after 10 minutes and 20–11 at half-time. The hosts scored another 20 after the break. The EHF’s match report highlighted the combination of effective defence and finishing, while Gazeta Sporturilor described Brest turning Romanian mistakes into transition goals. The sequence is important. Each possession that ends before a controlled shot or with a loose pass can put a defence under immediate pressure. Once Brest had a lead, those opportunities let them extend it before CSM could reliably settle into their defensive positions.

Clarisse Mairot led Brest with nine goals from 12 attempts. Oriane Ondono and Annika Lott added six each, Méline Nocandy five and captain Pauline Coatanéa four. Emma Friis and Maslova each scored eight for CSM. Their combined 16 goals accounted for almost two thirds of the Romanian total. Brest had five players with at least four goals, a distribution that made the attack harder to contain by adjusting against a single scorer. The box score gives Curea a reason to consider how other players can get clean attempts alongside Friis and Maslova.

The speed of the next attack after a turnover is one of the most useful things to watch on Sunday. CSM need to make their first pass after a recovery serve a clear purpose. An outlet into space can start a transition of their own, but a hurried ball to a covered player can return possession before their defence is ready. In a settled attack, a shot from the backcourt can be valuable when the defender has been moved. When several attackers are static and the shot is contested, Brest can respond to the rebound or save with their runners already looking upcourt.

Goalkeeping was another part of the difference in France. The EHF counted only one save for the Romanian goalkeepers before half-time, and Gazeta Sporturilor recorded 12 stops from 36 shots faced for Brest’s Camille Depuiset across the match. The same goalkeeper had made 14 saves in the bronze-medal game that CSM won. Those results are a reminder to read the save totals alongside the attempts each defence allows. Brest can make a goalkeeper’s work easier when its defenders force shooters to release from difficult positions. CSM can help its own goalkeepers by denying clear attempts on the break and ensuring the first defender back does not have to cover two runners alone.

Brest’s nine-goal half-time advantage also shows why the opening minutes matter beyond the score. If the home team is chasing from early on, the temptation to take the first available shot increases. That can favour the side already converting turnovers into opportunities. The alternative starts with getting into organised attacks and making Brest’s defenders move before the ball reaches the shooter. Fewer rushed finishes would give CSM a better chance of keeping players between Brest and their own goal, even when a possession ends without scoring.

Curea has one match to build on

CSM’s statement on November 10 cited Curea’s familiarity with the team and her work on the coaching staff. This is also a club she represented as a player. The EHF’s archive lists her in the 2015/16 campaign, when CSM won the European title against Győr. She had already taken interim responsibility in November 2025. The change therefore gives a different person authority over the bench, while retaining knowledge of the players and their training. It also means Curea could use Wednesday’s league match to adjust existing patterns without asking the group to learn a wholly new system in four days.

CSM beat Corona Brașov 38–26 in that match, on November 11. According to Gazeta Sporturilor, the teams were level at 11–11 around the 20th minute before CSM went in at half-time 19–14 up. The movement from a level score to a five-goal lead before the break is a useful detail. The home team found a way to change a match after an evenly contested opening spell. Against Brest, the same test may arrive much earlier if the French side establish the defensive pressure that worked in the first meeting.

Romanian league points and European group points are separate. The value of the Corona game for Sunday is that it gives the staff current examples of the team’s response to a difficult spell, including the way it used its advantage once it had one. The club will now face a more demanding transition opponent. A clean way to compare the two performances is to look at how often CSM can complete possessions under pressure, which players are available for a pass late in the attack and how quickly the team recovers when a move breaks down.

The scoring totals point to a defensive difference

Brest have scored 212 goals in seven European games. CSM have scored 209. That is a difference of only three across the group campaign, even after Brest outscored them by 15 in a single meeting. At the other end, Brest have conceded 189 and CSM 215. The gap in goals allowed is substantially larger than the gap in goals scored. The two sides have met the same six other clubs once each, so the comparison covers the same opponents, with a different mix of home and away venues. It is a more informative starting point for Sunday than looking at the two sides’ leading scorers alone.

Maslova has 41 goals in the competition and Tamara Horacek leads Brest with 38, according to the EHF preview. Their totals identify where the most goals have come from over seven games. Last week’s nine for Mairot and the contributions of Ondono and Lott show how the balance can change on one afternoon. Coatanéa, who scored four in that match, has extended her Brest contract for one year and is due to finish her career after 2027/28, the EHF reports. Her role in the current side gives Brest continuity while other players supply different parts of the attack.

Brest’s win in France also followed consecutive European losses to Team Esbjerg and FTC-Toyota Kovács. CSM have beaten Esbjerg at home this season, 34–31. They also lost at home to Sola, 30–22. Those results show how differently matches can develop even on the same floor. In this rematch, an organised defensive recovery would help CSM control the game’s pace. Brest can measure how well their half-court attack works if the home side offers fewer chances to break away than it did in France.

Two recent meetings, two different games

The clubs met on June 7 in Budapest for third place at the previous EHF FINAL4. CSM won 32–26 after leading 15–13 at half-time. Elizabeth Omoregie scored eight for the Romanian team, while Tatjana Brnović scored five, including three from three attempts in the opening half. Mairot scored 11 for Brest and still finished on the losing side. A strong individual scoring figure could coexist with a different team result. The Romanian team got goals from other positions and entered the second half with a lead that day.

The June game and November’s first meeting show a 21-goal swing in the margin, from CSM winning by six to losing by 15. They had different stakes, were played at different venues and unfolded in different ways. The bronze medal was decided at a neutral venue in a single game. November’s two meetings are league fixtures. The most relevant contrast for Sunday is the position each team had created by the interval. CSM had a two-goal lead in Budapest and a nine-goal deficit in France. The opening half can determine which team has to change its pace and take more risks after the break.

What is at stake before the European break

FTC and Esbjerg start the round with 12 points each. They meet in Hungary, with Brest two points behind them and CSM another four back. Under the EHF format the top two in each group advance straight to the quarter-finals. Teams finishing third through sixth go to the play-offs. That makes the race around CSM’s current place important in its own right. The EHF standings list Borussia Dortmund level with CSM on six points, with Sola and Budućnost on four. A two-point change can matter for the play-off positions even before the top two separate from the rest.

This is CSM’s final European match of 2026. The club’s next group fixture is against FTC in Bucharest on January 9, with a visit to Esbjerg following on January 16. A long interval after Sunday gives Curea time to work on the recurring weaknesses her team identifies. The match against Brest will give the staff a first European reference for that work. How the home side deals with the French defence in the opening ten minutes, how it shares the attempts beyond its two main scorers and how often it gets set after losing the ball are three ways to judge the response to last Saturday’s defeat.

Sources

Archive photo: Pauline Coatanéa in Brest colours against OGC Nice on April 21, 2024. Photo by Dacoucou / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Talal Osman