Italians and Belgians send get-well messages to injured teammates
Story of the day
The penultimate eighthfinal of CEV EuroVolley 2021 offered a four-set battle between Italy and Belgium. As expected, the Italians lived up to their status of heavy favourites, but the Belgians did not give in without a fight and left the tournament with their heads held high. With each of the two squads having lost an important player in the course of the championship, their captains took the opportunity to send Sarah Fahr and Britt Herbots good-luck messages on behalf of the whole teams.
In the third set of their most important match in Pool C in Zadar, Italy’s Sarah Fahr sustained a knee injury upon landing after a block. It turned out to be a torn cross ligament, which necessitated her departure from the tournament. Eventually, the 19-year-old middle was replaced by Alessia Mazzaro on the 14-strong Italian squad.
Miriam Sylla“Sarah, good luck! We will wait for you and you will come back stronger than before.”
Outside hitter and captain of Italy
Britt Herbots was not only Belgium’s greatest point-maker in their EuroVolley campaign so far, but also the second best scorer of the entire pool stage on a total tally of 119 points. However, before the team’s participation in the next stage of the competition, it became clear that the 21-year-old outside also had to leave the event to take care of an abdominal injury.
Ilka Van de Vyver“I wish she were here, but it was clear that she needed to go home. On behalf of the whole team, I wish her a fast recuperation and I hope she doesn’t miss the first matches in the Italian competition. So, good luck!”
Setter and captain of Belgium
In the absence of Fahr and Herbots, Italy defeated Belgium by 3-1 (25-14, 23-25, 25-17, 25-12) on Monday at the Stark Arena in Belgrade to book their spot among the European Championship quarterfinalists.
Opposite Paola Egonu was once again on fire for Italy and contributed the match high 27 points to the victory, while outside hitter Elena Pietrini added another 19, including the match winner. Belgium’s outside Celine Van Gestel was her team’s top scorer on 19 points.
“Of course, I miss Sarah, because I play with her and she is my friend, but we are a whole team and when someone is out, someone else is in,” Italy’s captain Miriam Sylla told cev.eu after the match. “We knew Belgium had some problems because of Herbots getting injured and I would just like to use this opportunity to say ‘good luck’ to her and to Sarah. The Belgians had difficult moments, but they never, never stopped fighting. And they showed it. They won a set at the moment when we stopped acting and playing the way we know how to. It was good that in the end we took back our energy and just played our game.”
“To play against Italy today was not in the plans. We hoped to play this in the next round, but because of our loss to France it didn’t work out that way,” commented Belgium’s captain Ilka Van de Vyver. “Anyway, it was really difficult. We know how they play since they played at the Olympics. Our only hope was that they underestimated us a little because we lost a player. But I need to say I am really proud of the team and how we kept on fighting. How we even won a set was incredible. Even though in the other sets our score was not so high, you saw how intense this game was and how we tried to find a solution and everything... So, this was it! This was European Championship 2021 for us...”
In one of Wednesday’s quarterfinals in Belgrade, Italy will take on Russia. In the very last eighthfinal of the tournament, on Monday evening, Belarus put on a fight and made the Russians work for it. With a five-ace contribution by match top scorer (on a total of 20 points) Arina Fedorovtseva, coach Sergio Busato’s squad celebrated with a 3-1 (27-25, 25-20, 19-25, 25-23) victory.
