22/07/2014 09:46
Montenegro vies for first international crown in European League Finals
2014 CEV Volleyball European League - Men
Budva, Montenegro, July 22, 2014. The men’s national team of Montenegro travels today to Thessaloniki, Greece where the first round of the 2014 CEV Volleyball European League – Men finals will be taking place on Wednesday night at 7 pm local time. Montenegro made it to the last act of the competition storming back from a 1:3 away defeat in Skopje to claim the return match in Budva and then edge the Former Y.R. of Macedonia at the golden set.
“The way we played the semi-final match with Macedonia shows that we deserve to play the finals,” head coach Slobodan Boskan, a former Olympic and European champion, says. “We played very bad in the first match where our opponents got control of the game and kept it throughout the whole match, thereby cruising to a well-deserved 3:1 victory. In the second game we performed much better, we were more determined and focused and we deserved to beat our opponent.”
The final matches with Montenegro will be a remake of those that these teams played a couple of weeks ago in Budva for the last round of the prelims. Montenegro and Greece recorded one victory apiece back then. “It is imperative that we impose our rhythm right from the first game,” Boskan reckons. “If we enter the match with this approach, we stand more chances to get a good result already in Thessaloniki before we go for the re-match on Saturday in Budva.”
Montenegro is making only their second appearance in the CEV Volleyball European League; Greece, on the other hand, has returned to the competition after missing the 2013 edition and has already improved on their best result ever, a bronze medal that dates back to 2006.
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