EuroVolleyM: Slovakia and Croatia play with the Eight Finals in sight

The pool phase of the CEV EuroVolley 2021 Men is approaching its end and while a few teams are already guaranteed in the Eight Finals, most of them are still trying to book their tickets to the elimination round. Among them are Slovakia and Croatia, who meet on Tallinn on Wednesday, in one of the eight matches of the day.

While France and Germany sit at the top of Pool D with three victories each, there’s an open race between the four other teams for the remaining two spots. Croatia is currently in good position, with two wins, against one of each of Latvia, Slovakia and Estonia.

The Slovakians, however, enter Wednesday’s match full of confidence after they won a five-setter against Latvia on Monday to celebrate their first victory in the tournament. With matches against Croatia and Germany ahead of them, they depend only on their results to move forward.

Among the Slovakian individual standouts in the tournament are outside hitters Matej Patak, who scored 19 points against the Latvians and ranks 12^th in blocks in the EuroVolley with ten, and Tomas Krisko, the 11^th-best ranked receiver with 39% efficiency.

The Croatians, however, are fresh from an even more dramatic triumph as they erased a two-set deficit against hosts Estonia on Tuesday to win 3-2 and give a significant step towards the Eight Finals. The match against Slovakia will be Croatia’s last on the pool phase but a victory will be enough to guarantee the Balkans in the elimination round.

The team coached by Italian Emanuele Zanini has been relying a lot on opposite Leo Andric, who’s the tenth-best scorer of the tournament with 61 points, but it was outside hitter Marko Sedlacek who came up big against the Estonians, delivering 20 points. Fellow outside hitter Ivan Zeljkovic, third in receiving with 48%, has been performing well on the backcourt too.