Spaniards clinch success in the opening match – 2012 European Olympic Qualifiers
Spain made a wonderful effort in the opening match of 2012 European Olympic Qualification Tournament on Wednesday. The Spaniard held off Slovenian team for 3-0 (25-17, 25-23, 25-18) win in the opening match.
The match was hosted by Bulgarian City Sofia, while Arena Armeec competition hall provided the ground for a cracking fight. Spain faced a lot resistance from Slovenia in the second but overall managed to overcome the opponent.
The tall fellow from Spain Iban Perez displayed stellar action on the net and helped his team with valuable 16 points, which included 15 winning spikes. He was named the best scorer of the match. He was followed by his teammate, Jorge Fernandez Valcarcel
who clipped 13 points.
Slovenia’s Mitja Gasparini and PAJENK put up good fight and struggled to bring their team of top. They added 12 and 11 points but their efforts went futile and team dropped the decision.
Slovenia scored the early points of the match in first set, while Spain was yet to be board. However, the Spaniards paced things with a combination of long and shorts shots. The Slovenian defensive expert had a difficult time to deal with the short-length
serves. Spain chased the score and went up on scoreboard. Once they picked up lead, the Spaniard never looked behind. They added points after points and eventually secured opening set, 25-17.
After the loss of opening frame, Slovenia changed the attack strategy and came up with new plan. Pajnek produced quality shots, which managed to land on the Spanish half. With better attack and defence, Slovenia improved to 8-5 lead at the first technical
timeout. However, they could not keep the momentum going and fell down after few rallies. Spain bounced back in the game and captured second set at 25-23.
Spain dominated the third set from start to end and achieved the match points, 25-18.
The head coach of Slovenia Veselin Vukovic was greatly disappointed by his team’s poor performance. He commented, “Our team played its worst game in the last two and a half seasons. Spain deserved the win, but we helped them a lot with our low spirit, lack
of concentration and poor performance in all elements.”
On contrary, the Spanish mentor Fernando Munoz Benitez expressed delight about victory. He seemed totally satisfied with his team’s performance. He shared his views in the following manner, “It was important for us to start the tournament with a win, so
I am very happy with the result. Our young team was paying attention to the game and made good technical decisions. I hope we can improve our performance in the side-out phase and be better against Serbia tomorrow.”
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