Germany makes flying start at the European Olympic Qualifiers – Volleyball news
German men’s national volleyball team clashed with Slovakia in the opening match of 2012 European Olympic Qualification Tournament on Tuesday.
Under the leadership of head coach Vital Heynen, German squad cruised past to 3-0 (25-19, 25-22, 25-20) win over Slovakia at the Arena Armeec competition hall in Sofia, Bulgaria. Slovakian team gave good competition to Germans but still could not manage
to clinch success.
Gyorgy Grozer of Germany registered 17 points and settled for top-scorer’s position. Slovakia’s Peter Michalovic emerged as the most prolific among his teammates as he clipped 11 points.
Germans broke the ice and added the first point of the match, while Slovakia was yet to be on board. However, Slovakia did not take long to flip the scores and went up. In response, Germany also hit back strongly and started hard-hitting. With nice combination
of attack and defence, Germany retook the lead and pushed the rivals behind.
Germany continued with success and did not miss a single chance to poke the ball over the net. Slovakian head coach requested for timeouts but nothing could work in his favour. Opening stanza of the match swiftly inched its way to the end and Germany seized
25-19 win.
Success in opening set enabled Germany to put more pressure on rival side in next set. Germany picked up 8-5 lead at the first technical timeout and moved to 16-12 at the second break. Slovakia trailed throughout the second set and received another loss.
Germany continued with its winning ways and won the match by capturing third consecutive set.
The Slovakian mentor Stefan Chrtiansky had his say about the match and explained the actually reason of his team’s failure. He said, “Slovakia's main problem in this match was the low effectiveness in offense and serving. I think the team was nervous, but
if we want to be better next time, we must improve not only mentally, but also technically.” His German counterpart also agreed that Slovakia needs to improve a lot.
Meanwhile, captain of Slovakia Michal Masny commented, “We started the match very badly. We made a lot of mistakes and although we were trying to fight, it was very difficult to play against Germany as equals. Our serving was easy and did not help us at
all.”
Germany has made a great start in Pool II and it is expected that the team will do well in upcoming matches. They will take on Finland in the next match, which has already lost one match to Italy. It is more likely that Finnish men will not create much of
trouble for Germany. On the other hand, Slovakia will also meet Finland in its next match on day-3 of the competition.
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