29/05/2015 20:37
Slovenia’s women claim historic qualification for EuroVolley finals
2015 CEV Volleyball European Championship - Women
Maribor, Slovenia, May 29, 2015. A chapter of Volleyball history was written on Friday in Maribor where the home heroines of Slovenia claimed also their second match with France, once more by 3:1 (25-16, 26-28, 25-21, 25-22) as they had done last Saturday in Niort, to celebrate a historic qualification for the Final Round of the CEV Volleyball European Championship. Once the Volleyball highlight of the year gets underway on September 26, Slovenia will join Italy, Poland and the Netherlands in Pool A in Apeldoorn in what will be their first appearance among Europe’s elite since the country’s independence back in 1991.
After claiming the first match by 3:1 in Niort, Slovenia needed to win another two sets to secure their qualification for the EuroVolley. After a tie at 2 all, the opening set was clearly dominated by the home side as France made a flurry of mistakes and even a time-out asked by their mentor Magali Magail could not help turn the tide. Slovenia showed a solid defence and their attacks were very effective as well, so everything went just easy for the home team that controlled the game through to the end (25-16).
At this stage France were with their back against the wall as they needed to win three sets in a row to call for the golden set. The teams exchanged the lead back and forth in the second set but after the first technical time-out France broke away by combining impressive blocks with a rock-solid defence, not giving the home team any opportunity to collect points with their attacks. France took a five-point lead at the second technical time-out (16:11) and then widened it to 24:16. However, right as the fate of the set seemed to be written, Slovenia performed an incredible comeback and with nine consecutive points they restored the balance. They even got two set balls at 25:24 and 26:25, but France’s block made the difference in the end keeping the ‘Bleues’ alive in the game (26-28).
France stretched momentum to the early stages of the third set where they rushed to a 7:2 lead after scoring five consecutive points. Slovenia eventually levelled the score at 10 all and with some more kills by Ziva Recek, Monika Potokar and Marina Cvetanovic, the home side edged ahead at 14:12. France fought back time and again flipping the charts around at the second technical time-out where the visitors were up by 16:14. Slovenia’s attacking trio responded with the same intensity and with three unanswered points made it 19:18 in their favour. Libero Katja Medved was simply outstanding in defence and she provided her teammates with the opportunity to score more and more eventually making it 24:21. At this point, Slovenia were only one point shy of a historic qualification for the Final Round of the European Championship. This time the hosts did not tremble and after cashing the next point, they could shed tears and start their party as they had just made history for Volleyball in their country.
The fourth set was then a pure formality and even though France initially took advantage of an understandable drop of concentration among the Slovenian players, the home heroines bounced back from 7:11 and got to the front at 14:13, not relinquishing their lead anymore through to the end of the match (25-22).
Slovenia’s mentor Bruno Najdic commented: “I am extremely proud of my players. Tonight we showed we maybe don’t have great, world-class players, but we have a real team. And this team won in France a week ago, and won today as well. In my opinion, the most important moment of this game came with our unbelievable comeback in the second set and that was what determined the final outcome of the match.”
Home player Sara Hutinski said: “I can’t describe my feelings right now. I am extremely happy and I am proud on my teammates, of our team. Tonight we had a difficult game. We knew we had to play as if we hadn’t played and won any other match last week. Yes, we were in a favourable position, but maybe it was enough to have a bad moment and everything would have gone the wrong way. But, in the end this did not happen and now we got the right to play at the European Championship for the first time in our history!”
France’s mentor Magali Magail said: “Congratulations to Slovenia. Their players were more determined today whilst my girls made too many mistakes. We started this match with nine mistakes already in the first set. This means nine direct points for our opponent. But this is sport and again, congratulations to the Slovenian girls.”
Click here for more info including detailed stats of the match
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