Katowice, Poland, August 31, 2017. Belgium achieved a historic success by qualifying for the semifinals of a men’s European Championship for the first time. Coach Vital Heynen’s squad mastered a 3-0 (25-21, 25-11, 25-23) victory over 2015 bronze medallists Italy in the late Katowice quarterfinal at LOTTO EUROVOLLEY POLAND 2017. On Saturday in Krakow, Belgium will face Russia in an attempt to continue their fairy tale into Sunday’s final.
The first set was very tight through the second technical time-out, which came at 16-15 Italy’s way. Thriving on the abundant errors of the opponents, at the same time putting a lot of precision into their own game and adding some great blocking to the mix, the Belgians gained control over the last third of the set. They scored four in a row to break away with a 19-16 lead and held on to it through the end – 25-21.
The second set was a cat-and-mouse affair. The Belgians enjoyed complete domination on the court. Himself at 100% in attack, captain Sam Deroo led his teammates to a landslide 25-11.
Belgium had the initiative throughout the third set as well and confidently made their way to the victory. However, this time the Italians made them work for it. With Luca Vettori taking charge of the Italian offence, the Azzurri managed to catch up on several occasions, but were never to take the lead. They were once again making far too many unforced errors, including the long serve that put an end to it all at 25-23 Belgium’s way.
The captain of the winning team Sam Deroo contributed 16 points to top the scorers’ chart of the match. Next, with 12 points each, were his teammate Bram Van den Dries and Italy’s Luca Vettori.
Matthias Valkiers, player of Belgium: "Tomorrow we will go to Krakow. I think our preparation was as good as possible. We will do our best. If we can control our game, then we can control our mistakes too."
Vital Heynen, coach of Belgium: "It was a very equal start to 20-20. Then we won the first set and played good Volleyball. Only in the third set we started thinking about winning and got a little bit nervous, but luckily we held on and I think it was an amazing game for us. We go to the semifinals to win..., maybe not by 3-0, but a 3-2 would be OK for us."
Daniele Mazzone, player of Italy: "This was a match against a great team; a team that is really strong, makes no mistakes in defense and blocking and has good spikers. It was difficult for us and we played with anger. Trying to score a point, we could not get through Belgium’s block on too many occasions."
Gianlorenzo Blengini, coach of Italy: "We tried to win this game, but we came across a really strong opponent. We did not do our best. Our serve, our block and our defence were much worse than yesterday. We focused too much on getting points. We should have focused on our technical skills."
Match Highlights
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