29/08/2020 22:00
Turkey and Serbia to play for gold at #EuroVolleyU19W
CEV U19 Volleyball European Championship 2020
Luxembourg, August 29, 2020. On Sunday, Turkey and Serbia will contest the gold medal match of this year’s #EuroVolleyU19W when the competition reaches its climax at 8 pm CEST in Zenica. Live streaming of the grand finale will be available on the CEV’s YouTube channel, as well as on EuroVolleyTV and the CEV’s official Facebook page. Belarus and France, on the other hand, will play for the bronze medal earlier in the afternoon. By claiming their respective semi-final matches on Saturday, Turkey and Serbia have also secured their participation in the next edition of the FIVB Women’s U20 World Championship due to take place in 2021.
Semi-finals 1-4 in Zenica (BIH)
Belarus vs. Turkey 1-3 (25-21, 17-25, 22-25, 24-26)
Belarus, coming from four straight victories in Pool I, started the match in the best possible way, but Turkey changed the course of the game and did not look back anymore – even though the third and fourth sets were incredibly close. If they beat France in the bronze medal match, Belarus will repeat their best performance in the history of the competition – they finished third in the 2002 edition held in Croatia. As for Turkey, they will be trying to repeat the success they achieved in 2012 when they took gold at home to go with three bronze medals from the 2008, 2014 and 2016 editions.
After a clean sweep of their Pool I matches, Belarus suffered on Saturday their first setback
Volha Palcheuskaya, head coach of Belarus: “This is Volleyball. The one who performs better eventually wins. Turkey played better than we did and they deservedly won. We still have a match left for the third place. Tomorrow is another day and we will see how it goes.”
Sahin Catma, coach of Turkey: “We lost the first set, but in the second set we started to play much better. We played well until the end and managed to claim a victory that is extremely important for us, and very important for Volleyball in Turkey. We have reached the final of the tournament and we will try to win that match as well.”
France vs. Serbia 1-3 (25-23, 15-25, 20-25, 14-25)
To emulate Turkey, Serbia came back from one set down in the second semi-final to secure a 3-1 victory over Pool II winners France. On Sunday, when playing Belarus for bronze, France will hope to secure their very first medal in the competition to improve on the fourth places achieved in 1992 and 1996. Serbia, on the other hand, have one gold medal to their name from 2014 – when their team including Tijana Boskovic emerged victorious from the event held in Estonia and Finland.
Fabrice Vial, head coach of France: “This was a bad match for us. Now we will turn to tomorrow’s third place game, which is very important for us, to try to win a medal. Congratulations to the Serbian team on the victory.”
Vanja Savic scored 20 points for Serbia in their 3-1 semi-final victory over France
Milan Gršić, head coach of Serbia: “Congratulations to the girls. It was a very nervous match, we knew what the stakes were, because the victory brings with it a spot at next year’s World Championship, which is the crowning of this generation, and participation in the Worlds is perhaps even more important than winning a medal at the European Championship. Despite some nervousness, we managed to balance our game and to beat the French. There is not any team still undefeated in the competition since today we managed to beat France, and Turkey beat Belarus. We have little time to rejoice. It remains for us after dinner to direct our thoughts towards the Turks. We have videos from all of their matches, and I do not think it will be a problem to determine the tactics. Let us hope for a great final!”
Poland and Bulgaria will play for the fifth place on Sunday at 5:30 pm, and Croatia and Slovakia will play for the seventh place at 3 pm. On Saturday, the Poles defeated Croatia 3-0 (25-20, 25-19, 25-8) in Osijek and Bulgaria achieved the same score in their matchup with Slovakia (25-17, 25-23, 25-17).
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