Matosinhos, Portugal, June 7, 2014.  Switzerland’s Yves Haussener / Florian Breer), France’s Marc Darrieux / Timothee Platre Spain’s Jimenez Gutierrez / Alejandro Huerta Pastor and Russia’s Vasilii Ivanov / Alexey Trokhan have taken the semifinal spots at the European Qualification Tournament for the men’s 2014 FIVB U17 World Championship.

Among all these, only the French team has reached this stage of the competition unbeaten.  It has not even lost a single set yet after shutting out Israel’s Ofek Berman / Ben Yehuda by 2:0 (21-5, 21-7) in the quarterfinal round.  The Swiss pair lost to the Spanish guys in their pool, but still finished on top of the standings, moving directly to the second elimination round, where it beat Dutch Nikita Artamonov / Mees Blom by 2:0 (21-13, 21-17).  The Spaniards first defeated Italy’s Edgardo Ceccoli / Andrea Marcotullio by 2:0 (21-12, 21-13) and then Portugal’s Joao Jardim / Joao Almeida by 2:0 (21-18, 21-17) to advance to the semis.  The Russians secured an eighthfinal 2:0 (24-22, 21-19) win over Poland’s Maciej Lewicki / Adam Lenc and a quarterfinal 2:0 (21-8, 24-22) victory over the other Portuguese duo, Joao Alves / Simao Pedrosa.

The semifinals on Sunday morning are Russia vs. Switzerland and France vs. Spain.  The four teams that lost the quarterfinals will distribute the places from fifth to eighth.  Two of their countries (Portugal, Israel and the Netherlands) will join those of the top four teams in the World Championship’s main draw.  The other one, and four more – Poland, Italy, Latvia and Turkey, which will take the places from ninth to twelfth in the final standings, will also travel to Mexico, but for the qualification phase in Acapulco.

The young Turkish players Mehmet Yildiz / Tomas Cercis Onder lost all their four matches in Matosinhos so far, but they are upbeat about the growth of beach volleyball in Turkey:  “Beach volleyball in Turkey has not yet achieved the visibility of volleyball, since we do not have many players, but that is about to change as we now have excellent conditions in place for the future of this discipline.  This tournament is a good event, very strong.  We really think Switzerland has high chances of going through and yesterday we played against Portugal, which we believe can be a surprise in this qualification.”