Innsbruck, Austria, September 12, 2011. The final match in the “Olympiahalle Innsbruck” brought the first tie-break in Pool C; France fought back from two sets down to defeat Italy and hence claimed the second place in the final standings of the group.
There was one thing that ran like a thread through the first two sets between Italy and France. France led both times (18:14, 13:9) but couldn’t manage to take it home (26-28, 22-25).
France started aggressively and put itself in a very comfortable situation (12:7) when Italy came up for the first time in the game. Luigi Mastrangelo and Dragan Travica (with a 5-0 mini-break) hammered a series of services into France’s court and inverted the score (19:18). France equalized again but couldn’t prevent Italy from winning the first set (28-26).
Same picture in the next set: a brilliant start of France (13:9) was followed by several consecutive points of Italy (16-15). In the end of the set France’s outside hitters not even failed to go for the 1:1, but were in fact blocked three times. Italy didn’t hesitate and took the second set.
As France was again leading in the third set, everybody was waiting for a further comeback of Italy. But this time France stayed focused and captured the set (25-17).
With this lift, France continued to dominate the game and didn’t struggle to win the fourth set.
Even though the decision about the final standings in Pool C had already being settled – with Italy first and France second – the outcome of the match was now a matter of prestige for both teams.
According to the expectations France set the pace again and finally got three match balls (14:11). Italy’s Emanuele Birarelli concluded the last game of the EuroVolley 2011 in the “Olympiahalle Innsbruck” after 135 minutes as his attack landed off the court.
Earvin Ngapeth top-scored for France (19), followed by José Trefle (15). Michal Lasko was Italy’s leading scorer (21).
French head coach Philippe Blain highlighted his team’s qualification for the Playoffs in Vienna. “In the end, for us this was the most important thing. I know that we had the chance to win Pool C and that makes me a little disappointed. Now we have to prepare well for the next match against Turkey”.
Mauro Berruto, head coach of Italy, was proud of his team. “Our first target was to claim Pool C. But we still need to improve. Especially in the first phase of almost every set, we had evident problems”. Italy’s Michal Lasko said that his team cannot be happy with the performance in the game. “The way we played the last three sets was really disappointing”.