Sofia, Bulgaria, June 6, 2014.  Bulgaria started its participation in the 2014 CEV Volleyball European League - Women with a 3:0 (25-15, 25-23, 25-17) victory over visiting Azerbaijan in the first match of Pool A.

The home side dominated smoothly in the first set and, especially due to the six aces it scored crushed the opponent by 25-15.  The second set had much more of a roller-coaster score line.  It was very competitive through, but after trailing by a point at 22-23, Bulgaria scored three points in a row to close the set at 25-23 with Azerbaijan making an attacking mistake at set point.  The team from southeastern Europe tried fighting back in the third set, taking advantage of Bulgaria’s errors and rushing to an early 7-2 lead.  With better performance in both spiking and blocking, the Lionesses climbed up to tie at 11-11 and took control through the end to hammer out another convincing win by 25-17 in the set and 3:0 in the match.

Nasya Dimitrova topped the scorers’ chart of the match with 13 points for Bulgaria, followed by teammates Gabriela Tsvetanova and Gergana Dimitrova with 11 each and Azerbaijan’s Jana Matiasovska-Aghayeva with 10.

Faig Garayev, head coach of Azerbaijan:  “I want to congratulate the Bulgarian team, which showed its character and won the game.”

Ivan Petkov, head coach of Bulgaria:  “We started the match with many unknowns and did not know what to expect from the game.  We played very well in all components.  So we cannot be unhappy with our game.  In fact we are very happy...”

The second match between the two teams is on Saturday at 17:30 local time, again at the Hristo Botev volleyball hall in Sofia.