Germany wins against Portugal in Pool D 3-1 – Volleyball news
City of Almirante Brown in Argentina hosted a tight match on Friday when Germany took on Portugal and posted 3-1 (25-17, 25-20, 23-25, 25-19) victory.
The two teams played under the tag of Pool D and contested their skills in front of more than 500 spectators at the City Hall Sport Centre. Germany dismissed Portugal and forced the team to stay without any win after a series of four matches at the 2012
FIVB World League.
Germany’s Jochen Schops and Portugal’s Valdir Sequeira had a tough competition for top-scorer’s position in the match. However, both of them ended with same score of 22 and shared the top spot.
Germans got off to a solid start in the match. Schops supplied plenty of power to the ball and produced unstoppable serves. Germany added quick points and led the score at the FTT. After the timeout, Portugal attacked via Sequeira and Alexandre. They gave
out good performance but German controlled the action with convincing blocks. As a result, Portugal could not manage to come up. Germans led the score all the way till end and closed first set at 25-17.
The second set was opened on a high note. Up till 12-9, the scoreboard showed many ups and downs. Nevertheless, Germany took full control of the operations afterwards. They denied the efforts of opponents and claimed another set by sending 25-20 on board.
It looked like Germany was going to finish the match in straight sets but it did not happen so easily. Portugal picked up an early lead and staged a consistent performance. Better status of Portugal forced Germany to bring in Patrick Steuerwald and Christian
Fromm in the team. However, the situation did not change and Portugal covered the length of third set with success. Germans suffered the loss with narrow gap of two points, 23-25.
Portugal captured the third set but failed to keep the momentum going in fourth set. Germany bounced back and took the score by storm. Triple blocks of Germans dismissed most of the opponents’ attack attempts and allowed Germany to claim fourth set, 25-19.
In the end, Germany marched away with 3-1 victory.
“We do not have any experience playing at this high level. It was a good match to improve our performance. We did stupid mistakes but we hope to improve them for tomorrow’ match against Bulgaria,” said Portugal’s Captain Andre Lopes.
His German counterpart Bjorn Andrae also had his say about the match. He stated, “We did good serving in the first two sets and then Portugal played better, but we could win. We took a good step winning this match today and we hope to be better tomorrow.”
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