Kraków, Poland, August 30, 2017. After a pool phase full of emotions and drama, LOTTO EUROVOLLEY POLAND 2017 entered the play-off round and Bulgaria were the first team to seal their place in the last eight of the competition with a 3-1 (23-25, 25-21, 25-11, 25-12) win against Finland in front of 3,561 spectators who had travelled to Tauron Arena from all over Europe and beyond.

Bulgaria coach Plamen Konstantinov changed one of his outside spikers from the previous game, with Rozalin Penchev coming in for Todor Skrimov. At first, his team struggled with serving as they did against Slovenia, but good play in the middle gave them a two-point lead at 8-6. Bulgaria lost their focus though and let Finland edge ahead at 14-12. Then Tsvetan Sokolov came alive, spiking well to tie things at 15-all. However, the Finns were not intimidated and made it 20-17 in their favour after a huge miss by Sokolov, and eventually Viktor Yosifov’s fault from the service line finished the set at 25-23 for Finland.

Finland started the second set well, but it was their opponents that had a slight advantage of 8-7 at the first technical time-out. After a Georgi Bratoev ace the difference reached five points at 12-7. The Bulgarians made less errors than before and it was enough for them to keep the upper hand until the second time-out. Then the margin began to fade away. It was as small as one following Niklas Seppänen’s kill (17-16), but Bulgaria held on to what was left and eventually reserve Rozalin Penchev’s spike ended it at 25-21.

The third set was one-sided right from the start, with the Bulgarians racing ahead to an 8-2 scoreline. Their block finally showed its potential and Finland had trouble getting around it. Sokolov was on fire and led the charge and Todor Skrimov’s brace of aces gave Bulgaria a gigantic 10-point lead at 13-3. The Finns could not change anything after this and went down 25-11.

The Bulgarians did not stop there. They led 6-1 in the fourth set due to their impeccable performance from the service line. The five-point margin stayed untouched, marking the considerable difference in level between the two teams. Even Bulgarian setter Bratoev was able to score a couple of points in attack. Towards the end Bulgaria cruised to victory and Velizar Chernokozhev ended the game at 25-13.

Quotes

Plamen Konstantinov, Bulgaria coach: “At this moment Finland are very young, They haven’t got too many experienced players, so I think that it is a normal result in this match. I’m maybe just a little surprised with how we started the match. We made a lot of mistakes, especially in serving. After the first set we found our serve, blocked well and our transition to attack was back so this result is normal. We are stronger.”

Nikolay Penchev, outside hitter of Bulgaria: “We played very well. The first set was a little nervous for us, but everyone knows how important the game was for both teams. At the beginning we made a lot of mistakes, in the serve for example, but in the next sets we concentrated 100% and we played better.”

Tuomas Sammelvuo, Finland coach: “I think that we came into the game like we had to, we had a very strong physical opponent, so we played very intelligently in attack, we were serving, defending and receiving well. The first two sets were like this, but later we started to lose the game – in serving and reception.

“Bulgaria were a lot better in these elements and their attack was at a high level. After the beginning of the third set, we lost confidence and faith and I think it shouldn’t have happened. For me this tournament was a part of a big process, we have a pretty new team, we started with the World League last year, we qualified for this tournament and for the World Championship and now we are in the second round here. It’s a very good point to analyse why and what we should do more. It was like a journey and now we have to try to understand the current situation.”

Sauli Sinkkonen, Finland: “It’s really hard to say why we lost. Bulgaria are a great team and we were able to play very well and very bad. The level is so high that you can’t win if you make mistakes as we did.”

Elviss Krastins, Finland: “We came into the game with a lot of energy, we were focussed very well on the things we agreed. In the next sets we started to lose concentration, especially in reception.”

Tommi Siirilä, Finland: “It’s really hard to say what happened in this match. Bulgaria are a good team. We had some ups and downs – sometimes we played really well and sometimes really bad. When the level is so high, it’s impossible to win when we perform this way.”