15/06/2012 23:45
Spain and Serbia make a step forward in Pool A in Granollers
2012 CEV Volleyball European League - Women
Granollers, Spain, June 15, 2012. The sports hall of Palau Desports in Granollers lived the excitement of the best European Volleyball, with the celebration of the first day of competition of the third leg of Pool A in the spectacular CEV Volleyball European League - Women. Serbia and Spain took advantage of their best game to achieve victories in the first matches of the weekend.
Serbia reinforced its leading position in the pool with yet another convincing victory in the first match of the day. Despite the attempts by Romania, Serbia presented a powerful performance that resulted in a straight triumph for the Plavi players – 3:0 (25-19, 25-13, 25-23).
The attacks and blocks by Nadia Ninkovic and the offensive efficiency by Ana Bjelica gave Serbia the required edge to overcome an enthusiast Romanian squad, that tried to put an end to the opponent success through multiple variations on the playing system of the team. However, Serbia gave no options to the players trained by Atanas Petrov and signed its seventh consecutive victory in this first round of the tournament, reaffirming its position of dominance in Pool A.
“Every first game is difficult,” head coach of Romania, Atanas Petrov, said. “We were under a lot of pressure today, not so much from the psychological point of view but from the fact that we lost our concentration in different moments of the match. We also had many individual mistakes and our reception was worse than usual.”
“We played a good match today and we could control almost every situation of the game,” the head coach of Serbia, Ratko Pavlicevic, pointed out. “We are satisfied because even in the third set, when we made too many mistakes, we found the right mentality in this difficult situation to close the match.”
In the second game of the day, Spain beat Hungary 3:0 (25-18, 25-19, 28-26) in a match in which the visiting team tried to overcome the enthusiasm of the local squad but were forced to make errors that produced a convincing victory for the home team.
The audience at Palau Desports sports hall vibrated with the effective performance of the Spanish players, as a good performance in defense and blocking allowed the Spaniards to take the lead in the sets despite the efforts from the Hungarian squad. After two clear first sets for Spain, the team trained by Zoltan Jokay was close to upset the home side in the third period, but the mistakes on the Hungarian side of the net, together with the powerful spikes by Milagros Collar and the good blocking and attacking performance of Encarnación García enabled the Spaniards to erase the opponent’s advantage. In an even ending of the set, the team trained by Francisco Hervás showed more inspiration to reach the final 28-26 and finish the match 3:0.
“In the first set we could not produce enough strong attacks to win, but in the second and third sets we had our options”, Hungarian head coach, Zoltan Jokay, said. “Some foolish mistakes from our side prevented us to win in those sets. The lack of precision was the key, as we made mistakes in reception, defense and offense".
“It is always best to make a winning start. It was not easy but now we have this match in our favor and this is the important thing,” Spanish head coach, Francisco Hervas, pointed out. “We played two very good first sets, but in the third it was complicated for us. Luckily, our players were able to come back and win,” the Spanish mentor added and also said that the key to the victory was that Spain “played at very good level in blocking and attacking”.
Spain will meet Romania and Hungary will play against Serbia in the second day of competition.
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