Belgium takes important three points in the Golden #EuroLeagueM

Saturday marked the start of the European Golden League and with that brought a lot of excitement. An interesting match for volleyball fans was played in the Men’s Pool B where Belgium met with two-time silver medalist, Croatia. In the end, the Belgians took the win by 3-1 (25-17, 25-21, 23-25, 25-23).

The Red Dragons started a bit handicapped, because Wout D’heer, champion of Italy with Trentino, was out due to a finger injury. He needed recovery for some weeks and will not play anymore during the Golden League.

The first set started off as a cat-and-mouse type of play whereas Belgium managed to separate a little bit from the Croatian team and soon had a five-point advantage. Belgians were coming a little bit too strong for the guest team and they already had the eight-point advantage (16-8) and they kept it up until the very end of the set which was won by Belgium (25-17).

The Croatian team stepped up their game in the second set but still wasn’t enough for the win. With 13 winning spikes they were delivering a really good performance but were just a little bit behind the national team of Belgium. In the end, the home team took another set win by 25-21.

The third set was definitely the one for the Croatians as they had three kill blocks and one ace which then brought them their first set win in the match. Belgium was keeping up with them throughout the whole set but Croatia took the set win by 23-25.

Belgians knew that they should win the next set in order to stop Croatia from going to the fifth set and they’ve managed to do so. They were keeping the tempo up with the guests but in the middle of the set managed to separate from them and went into the six-point lead (20-14). Croatia even managed to reduce the advantage to 24-23 and they had a good shoot of getting back in the match completely but in the end, Belgian took the 3-1 win by 25-23.