Arnhem, Netherlands, April 5, 2017. It seems that the Italian butterflies are not to stop at the 2017 CEV U18 Volleyball European Championship – Women. The squad of coach Luca Cristofani flew to their fourth consecutive victory to earn a ticket for the semi-finals which will be held on Saturday. That means that there is just one more spot for the teams from The Netherlands (2nd), Russia (3rd), Bulgaria (4th) and Turkey (5th) which still have the chance to make it among the top four teams here. Only last-ranked Germany can’t reach the semi-finals anymore but have set all hopes on qualification for the World Championship in Argentina. 

You can follow the Championship also on Facebook and Twitter, with the official hashtag to be used for all of your posts and tweets being #EuroVolleyU18W!

Bulgaria vs. Italy

It was a 70-minute Italian demonstration of power in Wednesday’s opening match, when the undefeated team from Italy overpowered a helpless Bulgaria in straight sets 3-0 (25-15, 25-13, 25-19). The Azzurrine controlled their opponents in all aspects of the match, eventually sealing their ticket to the semi-finals. Their fans saw a superior team, which dominated both physically and tactically, having a perfect match plan to stop the Bulgarian offence. With 10 block kills and 54% successful attacks, the Italians were the undoubted queens at the net today. The young Lionesses did their best to find a way into the match, but struggled with the offense that scored only 27% of their attacking efforts. Again Italian opposite Terry Ruth Enweonwu was the best scorer of the match and contributed 17 points.

Italy coach Luca Cristofani was happy: “Our emotions are high. I am so happy that we won the match and qualified for the semi-finals at the European Championship. That means also that we have secured the ticket to go to the World Championship in Argentina, where we can compete with the best teams in the world. We have one more match tomorrow, but our focus is already on Saturday.’’

His libero Serena Scognamillo said: “We played a very good match today and qualified for the semi-finals. We want to continue this run and will try our best to reach the maximum result.’’

Russia vs. Germany

Russia is back in business after defeating the German butterflies in straight sets 3-0 (25-23, 25-20, 25-19) to celebrate their second consecutive #EuroVolleyU18W victory. The Russian girls caught the momentum from the beginning of the match and profited from a confused German team that made already eight unforced service errors in the first set. The Russian players continued their run in the next stages and used their physical advantage to show some nice block actions against the smaller attackers from Germany. The young German ladies tried to react with a quicker match plan focussing on the middle blockers permanently, but their opponents had the ability to increase the level of their performance in defence to celebrate an easy win in the end. 11 points of Russian opposite Oxana Yakushina were enough to be the top scorer of the match.

The Russian coach Alexander Karikov said: “We played a very good game in block and service, which made the difference today. The match against Turkey will be very difficult tomorrow. The team with a stronger mind will win this game.’’

German assistant coach Martin Frydnes said: “We lost against a huge Russian block and were not effective in attack. Our reception was ok and we actually had a good preparation before this match, so we are sad that it didn’t work today.’’

German libero Linda Bock added: “We didn’t show the emotions we actually have and need for such an important game. We made too many unforced errors in service and didn’t have the right discipline to follow our match plan. I still believe in a victory against Bulgaria, if we can show our best performance tomorrow. Our dream is to qualify for the World Championship and this dream is still alive.’’

The Netherlands vs. Turkey

Great and excited Dutch fans saw their team claiming a 3-1 (25-18, 25-14, 24-26, 25-15) win at the European Championship to shock opponent Turkey with an outstanding performance for almost the entire match. The hosts grabbed an early 2-0 set lead, because Turkey offered too many deficits in attack, reaching never more than 39% of successful spikes. It looked like that the game would end in the third set. The firing Dutch offence scored time and again and led the team to a supreme leadership of 21-14 and 24-20. However, it wasn’t enough to finish the game in straights sets as the Turkish girls bounced back to score six points in a row to 26-24. But the comeback wasn’t the expected wake-up call for Turkey. Again too many mistakes in defence and a poor performance in attack changed the course of the game in favour of The Netherlands to eventually start the second #EuroVolleyU18W orange party in Arnhem. Best scorer of the one-sided duel was Dutch outside spiker Hester Jasper with a total of 18 points.

Julien Van de Vyver, Dutch coach said: “I am not 100% satisfied with this match. We should have ended the match in the third set, when we had four match points. We were too shaky at that particular moment, this should not happen again. Apart from the end of the third set, we played beautiful Volleyball. Our middle blockers scored well today and because of that we created room for our outside hitters. Tomorrow against Italy we have to show initiative.”

Sarah van Aalen, Dutch captain summarised: “Today we were in control for most of the match. The audience was so enthusiastic and that helped us very much. The circumstances for me as a setter were great today. Our receivers did their job, as well as our middle blockers. Because of that it was possible for me to play with the Turkish blockers. Tomorrow we face Italy, and they didn’t lose a single set so far this tournament. It’s up to us to change that.”

Onur Çarıkçı, Turkey coach said: “It was hard to play against the hosts in front the home crowd. We couldn’t show our game on the court today and made too many mistakes in attack as well in defence. We will do our best to win the difficult match against Russia tomorrow.’’