Al-Arabi Doha defeats Al-Ahly Cairo by 3-2 in FIVB Volleyball Men’s Club World Championship
Saturday, October 8, saw the opening day of the FIVB Volleyball Men’s Club World Championship take place in Doha, Qatar. The two teams that contested with each other in one of the first matches were Al-Arabi Doha of Qatar and Al-Ahly Cairo of Egypt. The
Qatar based team edged out the Egyptian team by 3-2.
What followed between the two sides was a gruelling battle that thrilled the spectators as it went on to five long sets, each one of which were fiercely fought by the two teams. The opening set went back and forth all through but the club from Qatar was
able to win it eventually. The second set witnessed the Egyptians fight long and hard and they were successful in equalising the match. The third set was taken by the home team but they gave away the fourth. However, Al-Arabi Doha was able to seal the deal
on the match by winning it at the following final set scores: 25-23, 29-31, 26-24, 21-25 and 15-12.
The coach of the winning team, Ibrahim Mohamed, made the following comments at the press conference after his team had won the match: “It was a strong match. We played five sets against a team which has highly professional players. I would like to congratulate
them for their performance. As my captain said, the referee wasn’t fair to us at this match.”
On the other hand, the coach of Al-Arabi Doha, Adel Sennoun, expressed himself in this manner: “We didn’t play well. The referees were great. I really don’t know why the Egyptian team is complaining about the referees. I’m not satisfied with the performance
of my team. We committed many mistakes, thus I think the final result should be three sets for us and none for them.”
The first technical time out of the opening set went in favour of Al-Arabi at 8-6. The Egyptians did not give up the chase and closed in the gap at 17-15. However, the squad from Qatar did not let go of the advantage and bagged the set at 25-23.
The second set of the game got tied at 19-19 and also reached another tie at 22-22 before going on to a third tie at 24-24. After long and hard battle, the Egyptians were able to equalize the match by securing the second set at 31-29.
Al-Arabi did not let their opponents take the third set and bagged it for themselves at 26-24 but the Egyptians made the match reach the fifth set by taking the fourth one at 25-21. The final set saw Al-Ahly take the lead at 2-0 but the squad from Qatar
took the advantage at 4-3. The match got to a tie at 11-11 but Al-Arabi was able to seal the deal at 15-12.
The player that was able to lead all scorers was Christian Pampel of Doha. Pampel made his mark by putting up an impressive number of 30 points in the entire match. The player that remained most active for the Egyptian club was Ahmed Abdelhay with a total
of 26 points for his team.
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