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Both the national team of Belgium and Portugal lost their opening matches in Pool A of the EuroVolley 2021 yesterday – so day 2 mattered. The teams met each other on the court at the Tauron Arena in Krakow and in the end it was the Portuguese players who could celebrate a thrilling 3-2 victory.

It was a good start for Portugal in the first set, who built up a few-points advantage (4-1) and kept it right until the middle of the set. Towards the end the Belgian team managed to reduce the gap to one point (21-20), but finally the winner was the Portuguese (25:23).

The second set was quite difficult for both teams, neither of them were able to secure any advantage, and the key players lost their effectiveness in attack. So the coaches decided to perform some positional substitutions and although the ending was fairly equal, it was Portugal again who kept a cool head and became took it to 22 points.

In the third part Belgium fought hard so it would not be the last set of the game. They edged ahead from the beginning of the game and their opponents did not seem to have any solution on how to stop them (18-13).
The fourth set was tied until halfway, but then the eventual top scorer of Belgium, outside spiker and captain of the team – Sam Deroo, made the difference, helping his team to win comfortably (25:18).

The final result of the match was about to get settled. It was 8-7 at the turnaround, but in the end Portugal succeeded in coming back when it mattered and rode out 15-13 winners.