Turkey keep perfect record at #EuroVolleyU17M qualifier in Portugal
News
Turkey claimed a second victory in as many matches at the #EuroVolleyU17M qualifier in Viana do Castelo, as on Thursday they beat Spain 3-0. Later in the evening, Austria routed hosts Portugal 3-0 as well to make up for their tiebreak loss to Turkey the day before.
Ali Kazim Hidayetoglu“There are four good teams in this tournament and we are one of them. Today we played very well, as we had planned to do and as a result, we won. We are happy with our performance, but tomorrow we have a game with Portugal and we want to play just as we did against Spain. We do not see ourselves as the favourites of this competition.”
Assistant coach of Turkey
By displaying a truly impressive performance and quality especially for a group of such young players, Turkey stormed to a comprehensive 3-0 victory (25-16, 25-17, 25-20) in their matchup with Spain to keep a perfect record in the competition. Dogan Karakoç was Turkey’s top performer with a personal tally of 25 points, as Efren Real Morales scored 10 times for Spain in their losing effort.
Carlos Carreno Cejudo, head coach of Spain: “Maybe this would not have changed the result, but we could have showed a different attitude. We managed to stay in contention only for a while in the first and second sets, where Turkey, who is very strong physically, was always on top. Tomorrow we will play an important match against Austria, who has a very good team physically as well. However, they do not play as well as Turkey do and we hope to show a much better performance and more determination to fight than we did today.”
Later in the day, Austria beat Portugal 3-0 (25-17, 25-12, 25-21) to stay in contention for a spot in the Final Round of the European Championship. Francisco Mendes (POR) with 11 points and Paul Nusterer (AUT) with 10 were the best scorers of the match.
On Friday, when the competition reaches its climax, Austria will play Spain before Turkey take on hosts Portugal, with both matches streamed live on Voley.TV, the multimedia channel run by the Portuguese Volleyball Federation.
Nuno Pereira, Portugal coach: “It was a very difficult match for us. Austria put a lot of pressure with their service and therefore created many difficulties for us in reception. As they are very tall, we could not find alternatives to overcome their block. In the third set, we finally managed to reduce the number of unforced errors and we stayed in contention almost until the end. Tomorrow, our goal is to play better than we did in our previous matches.”
Nina Sawatzki“We are very happy with this victory and the numbers that were achieved keep us in contention for qualification for the Final Round. We won two sets easily, but the Portuguese fought very well in the third. Tomorrow there is going to be the typical match featuring two teams fighting for the same goal, but we want to win by the maximum margin so that we can qualify for the European Championship.”
Head coach of Team Austria