Egypt scores second win at African Olympic Qualification Tournament – Volleyball news
The African men’s qualifying tournament for the 2012 London Olympic Games is underway in Cameroon.
The five-day competition took centre stage on Tuesday, January 17 and it will complete its run on January 21. The Yaoundé Multipurpose Sports Complex (Palais Polyvalent des Sports de Yaoundé) in Cameroon is hosting the cracking fights of African teams for
the Olympic berth.
The reigning African champion and the top contender of Olympic ticket, Egyptian team played its third match of the tournament on Thursday and added second consecutive win to its count.
Egypt breezed past its conventional rival, the Algerian squad in straight sets of 3-0 (25-21, 25-19, 26-24). So far, Egypt is going pretty well and it seems that the team is determined to win the Olympic ticket for second time in row. Although Egypt dropped
its first match of the tournament to Tunisia but managed to get back on track in the next match, with a splendid victory over Ghana. Furthermore, the team carried the momentum into the third match and improved to 2-1 record by defeating Algeria.
The duo of outside hitter Ahmed Abdelhay and wing spiker Mohamed Badawy stole the show with their brilliant performance. They contributed 13 points apiece and played a vital role in Egypt’s success in the match. On the other hand, Algeria’s Mahdi Hachemi
put up great effort to save the match. He emerged as the top scorer on his side with a total of 12 points.
Algeria did not have a great start in the match. The Algerian team had a tiring five-set match with host Cameroon on Wednesday and the players looked visibly exhausted in the match against Egypt.
On the contrary, Egypt had scored a straight set win over Ghana in the previous match and team enjoyed a great rhythm and tone. In the first set, Egypt went up on the scoreboard with considerable margin and captured the opening set, 25-21.
The second set unfolded with a similar story and another set slipped from the hands of Algerian team (25-19). However, the third set featured tough competition. Both teams fought a great battle, while Egypt earned success in the end, 26-24.
The winning coach Sherif El Shemerly shared his thoughts after the match. He stated, “Algeria played a great match. My opinion is that Algeria is a good team. Our players were well prepared for this competition through other competitions in which we participated
specially the World Cup and All Arab Games.”
Likewise, his Algerian counterpart Kamel Imeloul lamented also had his say about the match. He commented, “The formula with five championship team is very restrictive as it only requires a defeat to review its calculations. We lost our two games. Coming
here, we had very good intentions. The competition was a different story.”
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