10/07/2015 21:40
Greece open European League campaign with three-set win over Romania
2015 CEV Volleyball European League - Men
Thessaloniki, Greece, July 10, 2015. Greece men’s national team caught a perfect start of their campaign in the 2015 CEV Volleyball European League – Men as they cruised to a 3:0 (25-22, 25-20, 25-21) win over Romania on Friday night at Evosmos Municipal Sports Hall in Thessaloniki. The two teams will face each other again on Saturday at 20:00 local time, in the same venue, in order to complete their first weekend of action in Pool B.
The hosts had the advantage of playing in front of some 1,000 young enthusiastic fans, but also had more playing time as a team, compared with a rival which hadn’t played any matches this summer up till tonight. On the contrary, Greece had already participated in the FIVB World League, and had played quite a few friendly matches as well.
Another remarkable difference between the two sides was the fact that Greece’s roster consists mostly of young players (opposite Apostolos Armenakis and libero Konstantinos Tampouratzis are the only ones above 30), while Romania depends almost exclusively on experienced players, aged between 26 and 35.
Either way, the Greek side proved readier for the challenge and clinched a comfortable three-set win, based on their good receiving percentage, which gave setter Dmytro Filippov the opportunity to play an excellent match and take good advantage of all his team-mates.
Greece took an early lead in the opening set (4:1) thanks to three blocks by Georgios Petreas, but Danut Pascu’s players reacted and made it 8:9 after Dan Borota stamped a block on Rafail Koumentakis. It was a hard fight from then on, with the hosts dissipating their two-point advantage as Adrian Gontariu scored an ace and made it 21:21. Nevertheless, at that point Koumentakis led the local team to a 3-0 streak (24:21) and the definitive 25-22 was sealed after a missed service of the visitors.
Set 2 was easier for Sotirios Drikos’s team, which had a 4:0 rally and then took a 13:8 lead, boosted by Armenakis’s services and Andreas-Dimitrios Fragkos’s attacks. The Romanians couldn’t come any closer than two points (18:16) and eventually succumbed 25-20 after a missed attack by Gontariu.
Danut Pascu put some new faces in set 3 and this revamped his team, which took the lead in the beginning (0:2). However, with the scoreboard at 7:9 in favour of the visitors, the Greek side had an impressive 8:0 run, led by Koumentakis standing behind the service line, and made it 15:9. From then on, there was no turning back for the Romanians, who were 24:19 down and eventually lost the set and the match after a successful spike by Fragkos.
Sotirios Drikos, coach of Greece, said: “For such kind of series [on a single weekend] the important match is the second one, especially when you are playing at home. We must play even better tomorrow because Romania will perform better for sure.”
Andreas-Dimitrios Fragkos added: “We performed really well today. We created a lot of problems with our blocking and I hope we will play at the same level tomorrow. By winning this way we are getting more confident for the next matches.”
Danut Pascu, coach of Romania: “It’s hard to say something about today’s performance. We played very bad. This was our first match this season because we didn’t have any friendly match before. Greece played well and they deserved to win but I hope that we will play better tomorrow.”
Adrian Gontariu, team captain of Romania: “The first set was the crucial one for the match because after that Greece played without any pressure. We had our chances but we missed a lot of services and we made many mistakes. We are not ready, we didn’t have any friendly matches but we are not looking for excuses.”
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