Serbia clinches spot in FIVB World Championship semi-finals
Serbia clinched a spot in the semi-finals of the Federation Internationale de Volleyball’s (FIVB) Men’s World Championships with a 3-1 (28-26, 16-25, 25-21, 27-25) victory over Russia on Tuesday. Serbia
beat Argentina in the first match up of Pool P to end round three with a 2-0 record.
“Congratulations to Serbia,” said Russian coach Daniele Bagnoli. “In this game we couldn’t play well because some players had physical problems. We made too many faults, and this is why we are out of
the semi-finals. Anyway the World Championship is not over and we need to play well now.”
Ivan Milijkovic scored an impressive 26 points for Serbia in the match, but it was Russia taking the early lead in the first set. Serbia began the match with early mistakes, and Russia took a 16-13 lead
in the first set, by taking advantage of those errors. A few minutes later Russia had expanded their lead to 21-18, but Serbia battled back to tie the set at 24-24.
Seeing that his team was letting the set slip away, Bagnoli called a timeout, but it wasn’t enough as Serbia took the set 28-26.
The second set saw Russia again take an early 11-6 lead, and this time the Russians would not be denied the set victory as they won 25-16 on the strength of a 60 per cent attack advantage. Russia and Serbia
entered the third set even the scoresheets.
In that set though, Serbian captain, Nikola Grbic, took the reins and led his team to a third set win with sets and blocks that would have impressed anyone. Grbic ended the match with six points, three
kill blocks, 21 running sets and 75 still sets.
“I think we played very well tonight,” said Grbic. “Congratulations to my players that played with their heart. I’m a proud person and, if you want to win a gold medal you have to win everything. I consider
Russia a very good team.”
Russia would not go away down 2-1 in the fourth set. With elimination from the semi-finals pending, the Russian team rallied to take another early lead, this time 11-8, but Stankovic evened the score with
a flurry of spikes. The two teams stayed close until Milijkovic finally won the fourth set for Serbia with his 25th spike of the match.
Serbia will play either Bulgaria or Cuba in the semi-finals.
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