EuroVolleyM: Serbia in state of alert against emerging Turkey
Preview
An elimination match involving the defending champions and a team that never made past the 11th place should, in theory, be fairly one-sided but that’s certainly not what we’re going to see when Serbia meets Turkey in the Eight Finals of the CEV EuroVolley Men 2021 on Sunday in Gdansk.
The reigning continental champions, who won four of their first five matches to finish second on Pool A, are certainly the favorites but the Turkish have showed they have what it takes to cause an upset after winning three matches to rank third on Pool C.
The Serbians won 14 of their last 15 matches in the EuroVolley, with their only setback in the period being a five-set loss to reigning world champions Poland eight days ago. The Serbian campaign on pool play was far from perfect, though, with hiccups that included two sets dropped to Greece and one against each of Belgium and Portugal.
The team knows it needs to step up its game in the elimination round and a lot of it comes from getting better production from its star players. Rested in one match during the pool phase, 2019 Most Valuable Player Uros Kovacevic, the 13th-best scorer of the EuroVolley with 74 points, and opposite Aleksandar Atanasijevic, 11th in serving with eight aces, will be instrumental to the team’s success in the most important moment of the tournament.
Turkey, however, has nothing to say about the production coming from its star player, opposite Adis Lagumdzija. The 22-year-old, Bosnia & Herzegovina-born rising star has been on fire at the start of the EuroVolley, ranking second in points scored with 104.
The Turkish entered the tournament with good momentum after taking gold at the 2021 CEV European Golden League earlier in the summer and managed to carry it through their first three matches, most impressively upsetting Tokyo Olympic silver medalists Russia in their opener. After ending the pool phase with two consecutive losses, Turkey is looking for an opportunity to rebound and it doesn’t get much better than playing the defending champions.
Three other Eight Final matches will happen on Sunday with the Netherlands facing Portugal in Gdansk and Italy playing Latvia and Germany clashing with Bulgaria in Ostrava.
