Seven countries battle for Queen & King of the Court men’s crown
News
Teams from seven different nations will fight for the men’s title of the Queen & King of the Court European Finals 2023 when the second edition of the tournament comes to an end on Saturday, at the d’Coque, in Luxembourg.
The ten semifinalists were known on Friday, with nine of them emerging from the three quarterfinals (three in each series) and one coming from the second-chance semifinal playoffs.
Quarterfinal A resumed early on Friday after getting suspended and postponed on Thursday evening, when a storm hit the Luxembourg City area. The break was a positive one for Polish Michal Bryl and Bartosz Łosiak, who had had a slow start on Thursday and found their best game to finish first on Friday.
The Olympians finished first in the third round with 13 points and advanced alongside French Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, who also had 13 points, and Czechs Vaclav Bercik and Krystof Nemec, who had six. The three teams made it to the semifinals.
Michal Bryl“Yesterday, we started really slow and we had some problems, we barely advanced in round one. We talked about it and said that we needed to be at our 100% from the start today and that helped us have a successful day.”
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Marco Krattiger and Florian Breer went from last to best in quarterfinal B, barely avoiding elimination with a fourth-place finish in the first round, to win the other two. The Swiss were at the top in round three, getting to 15 points and outscoring Poland’s Piotr Kantor/Jakub Zdybek, with six, and Ukraine’s Sergiy Popov/Eduard Reznik, with three.
The three teams to advance from quarterfinal C were Germany’s Nils Ehlers/Clemens Wickler, Austria’s Maximilian Trummer/Christopher Dressler and France’s Quincy Aye/Calvin Aye. The Germans won round three with ten points, followed by the Austrians with nine and the French with seven.
The last spot in the semifinals went to Czech Olympians Ondrej Perušic and David Schweiner, who got to 14 points and narrowly outscored compatriots Jan Dumek and Jiri Sedlak (13) and French up-and-comers Arthur Canet and Téo Rotar (3) in the quarterfinal playoffs.
Semifinal A will begin at 12:15 local time, with Krattiger/Breer, Bryl/Łosiak, Bercik/Nemek, Trummer/Dressler and Aye/Aye playing for two spots in the Finals. At 15:40, it will be time for semifinal B, where Ehlers/Wickler, Krou/Gauthier-Rat, Kantor/Zdybek, Popov/Reznik and Perušic/Schweiner will battle. The fourth and fifth-placed duos in the two series will compete in the semifinal playoffs, with the last spot in the Finals in play.
The Queen & King of the Court European Finals 2023 final series is scheduled for 20:00 local time and all matches will be streamed live on EuroVolleyTV.