Antalya, Turkey, July 12, 2019. 18-year-old Russians Alexey Gusev and Pavel Shustrov powered through their pool at the men’s CEV U22 Beach Volleyball European Championship 2019 in Antalya and became one of the eight teams that topped their pool standings to advance straight to the last 16. Duos from Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Spain will also skip Saturday’s first round of the single elimination stage, waiting for their opponents for the quarterfinal spots to emerge.
Third-seeded Gusev and Shustrov went through their Pool C in an emphatic fashion, without dropping a single set. On Friday, the 2017 U18 European champions and 2018 bronze medallists from both the U19 World Championship and the U20 European Championship added two shutouts to the one they had mastered on Thursday – 2-0 (21-17, 21-7) against Serbia’s Nikola Vujovic and Vlastimir Lukic and 2-0 (21-16, 21-17) against Denmark’s Jacob Stein Brinck and Mikkel Hoff.
“The pool was very good. We didn’t start our first match very well, but we quickly came back and played well through the rest of the games. I hope we will continue to perform well going forward,” Shustrov said.
“We will continue trying to show our level and maintain it all through, in order to win against all our opponents and reach the goal we have set for this tournament. And our goals are always the highest ones possible,” Gusev added.
The first place in Pool E was down to the last match, between the two undefeated teams of Austria and Germany. The fifth-seeded Austrians Laurenz Leitner and Moritz Fabian Kindl lived up to their status and mastered a 2-0 (21-13, 21-19) victory over 12th-seeded Lukas Pfretzschner and Robin Sowa to claim the top of the pool standings on an impeccable record.
Tough over-the-net battle between Austria and Germany
The two unbeaten duos in Pool G also had to battle it out for a direct ticket to the last 16 in the last leg of pool play. Italy’s Samuele Cottafava and Jakob Windisch, seeded 10th, hammered out a 2-0 (21-16, 21-16) win over defending champions Kristaps Smits and Mihails Samoilovs of Latvia, seeded seventh, and also topped the standings without dropping a set.
In a similar fashion, second-seeded Alejandro Huerta Pastor and Óscar Jiménez Gutiérrez of Spain swept through their Pool B with three straight-set victories. So did 13th-seeded Dutchmen Mees Blom and Yorick de Groot in Pool D, delivering a 2-0 (21-16, 21-14) upset of fourth-seeded Nils Gunnar Ringøen and Johannes Helland-Hansen of Norway in their last match. Lithuania’s Patrikas Stankevicius and Audrius Knasas, seeded sixth, dominated Pool F snatching three clear wins.
The decisive duel for the first place in Pool H was extended to three sets. Once again inspired by a noisy crowd of family and fans on the stands, ninth-seeded Frenchmen Timothée Platre and Théo Faure mounted a tremendous comeback from a set down against eighth-seeded Florian Breer and Leo Dillier of Switzerland. They kept their cool at 13-13 in the tiebreak and finished it off with a clean kill and a monster block for 2-1 (18-21, 21-16, 15-13).
Pool A offered a fascinating turn of events, with three teams ending up on two wins apiece – top-seeded Turks Yusuf Ozdemir and Mustafa Susam, 17th-seeded Jiri Sedlak and Patrik Manas of the Czech Republic and bottom-seeded Latvians Rudolfs Stankevics and Arturs Rinkevics. After losing to Turkey in a nail-biting three-setter on Friday morning, 1-2 (22-24, 21-14, 15-17), and mastering a 2-0 (21-13, 21-14) shutout of Latvia in the afternoon, the Czechs emerged on top on point ratio, leaving the other two pairs to battle on in the first knockout round.
Czech Republic's Jiri Sedlak spikes against the block of Turkey’s Yusuf Ozdemir
The pool runners-up will be drawn against the third-placed teams for the first elimination round match-ups, which will determine the other eight participants in the round of 16.
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