18/09/2015 20:17
Milan Masters underway in iconic venue, four teams qualify for Main Draw of 2015 #EuroBeachVolley last stop
2015 CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship - Milan Masters
Milano, Italy, September 19, 2015. The Milan Masters, last stop of this year’s CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship, got underway on Friday with the qualification round. The teams and the fans shared the same excitement about the iconic venue set up right by the towers that host the Regional Government of Lombardy to contribute to a stage is absolutely unique for the sport.
15 teams joined the qualification and following completion of two rounds four tandems secured their pass to the Main Draw which is set to start on Saturday. These are England’s Jake Sheaf/Chris Gregory, Germany’s twins David and Bennet Poniewaz, Denmark’s Peter Kildegaard and Kristoffer Abell and Austria’s Alexander Huber/Robin Seidl who edged their countrymen Peter Eglseer and Daniel Müllner in an exciting ‘alpine derby’.
The only Italian team involved in the qualification round, Giacomo De Fabritiis/Giulio Morelli, lost in two sets (17-21, 11-21) to Kildegaard/Abell who controlled the match from start to end to prevent any possible comeback by the home heroes. De Fabritiis and Morelli played with a lot of courage but already halfway through the opening set their task looked like an almost impossible one against the much more experienced Danes who earlier this summer had performed well at the Baku 2015 European Games before finishing in fourth place at the CEV Satellite held in Skopje.
Friday’s most exciting match was provided by England’s Sheaf/Gregory who fought for 53 minutes before edging Turkey’s Sefa Urlu/Hasan Hüseyin Mermer 19-21, 21-19, 15-12 to claim a spot in the Main Draw and live up to their status of first-seeded team in the qualification.
The tournament resumes on Saturday morning at 9 am with three Italian teams set to delight the local crowd: 2014 European champions Paolo Nicolai/Daniele Lupo who just won bronze at the FIVB Sochi Open, 2015 European silver medallists Alex Ranghieri/Adrian Carambula and outsiders Marco Caminati/Enrico Rossi. The tournament’s entry list is headlined by two Dutch teams, 2015 world silver medallists Reinder Nummerdor/Christiaan Varenhorst and 2013 world champions Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen.
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