Serbia did not take advantage a huge chance to beat Brazil and to gain a vital occasion to do a significant step towards quarterfinals. U.S. National Team was not able to finish off Russia despite has already being lead 2-0. It was the first defeat of USA at the Olympics.
Pool A
Great Britain 0 – 3 Poland
Top scorers: O. Bakare 14, M. Plotyczer 8, M. McGivern 3, Z. Bartman 20, B. Kurek 16, G. Kosok 7
Poland beat Great Britain in straight sets (25-16, 25-19, and 25-18) in a pool A preliminary round match at Earls Court on Saturday. Zbigniew Bartman top scored for Poland with 20 points with Bartosz Kurek helping his side with 16, while Dami Bakare was the only British player in double digits with 14. Poland outclassed Team GB in blocking (9 vs. 0) with Kurek serving 3 out of 5 aces scored by his team. With this result, Poland improve their record to 3 wins and 1 loss in the tournament, while Team GB sits at the bottom of the charts with 4 losses in as many matches so far.
Australia 2 – 3 Italy
Top scorers: T. Edgar 18, A. Zingel 15, T. Passier 12; M. Lasko 25, C. Savani 17, A. Fei 12
Italy overcame a two-set deficit to defeat a resilient Australia in a thrilling five-setter (21-25, 18-25, 25-21, 25-14, 15-13) in a match of Pool A of the Olympic Games men’s volleyball tournament on Saturday.
The Australians won the defensive battle at the net with 19 blocks to 12 from the winners who served 8 aces to 5 by the defeated side.
Michal Lasko led the winners with 25 points, including two blocks and two aces, followed by Cristian Savani with 17. Alessandro Fei and Luigi Mastrangelo contributed 12 and 11 respectively.
Australia’s Thomas Edgar totaled 18 points, including three blocks and two serving aces, as one of five Aussies in double digits. Aidan Zingel finished with 15, Travis Passier chipped in with 12 and a match-high five blocks, and Adam White and Igor Yudin charted 12 and 11 points.
A Italian coach, Mauro Berruto, was vain before the beginning of the Olympics. He said that only Russia and Brazil could stop his team in the race to the Olympics gold. Probably, he has never watched a fantastic movie directed by Taylor Hackford – ‘Devil’s Advocate’. In the last scene of the movie, Al Pacino playing a role of the title Devil said: ‘ Vanity is my favorite sin’. Berruto shoved this feature of character and perhaps, he and his team has been punished by God, obviously, if he believes in Lord. Berruto was maintaining that Italy will play very good volleyball, but this thesis has not been confirmed so far. Italy lost with Poland , beat Argentina and they hardly won over Australia. However, Italy is playing poor. A setter Dragan Travica is one of worse in this tournament. He is not able to set a ball correctly, if it is not received properly. What is more, when the ball is at the left wing you can be sure that Travica will set the ball at left while the ball is at right, he plays at right without no switches. As the result, Italian play extremely easy volleyball to predict .You cannot think that wing-spikers will kill ball if there is no aim from a setter’s side. Michal Lasko tries tow away Italy, but it is not enough. Italian fans must believe that their team will play better and better, but will not it be a pipe dream?
Argentina 3 – 0 Bulgaria
Top scorers: R. Quiroga 17, F. Pereira 17, F. Conte 15; T. Sokolov 25, T. Aleksiev 15, T. Skrimov 11
Argentina eventually stopped the winning march of Bulgaria on Saturday evening at Earls Court as the South Americans got past the side that stood atop of the charts in Pool A after three rounds of play. The match eventually ended in a 3-1 win (25-18, 21-25, 25-19, and 25-20) for Argentina that with this result improved its record to 2 wins and 2 losses.
A total of four players from Argentina finished the game in double figures, with Federico Pereyra and Rodrigo Quiroga contributing 17 apiece, while Facundo Conte and Sebastian Solé added 16 and 10 to the tally of the South Americans. Even though they played below the standards of their previous matches, still Bulgaria had the best scorer of the game on their side with Tsvetan Sokolov (25), but Argentina was superior in all fundamentals, with Quiroga contributing five out of 11 aces. Via this win Argentina also improved on its Olympic record with Bulgaria, moving up to 2 wins and 1 loss.
Bulgaria lost leadership in pool A in favor of Poland after this failure.
Standings:
- Poland Pts 9
- Bulgaria Pts 9
- Italy Pts 8
- Argentina Pts 6
- Australia Pts 4
- Great Britain Pts 0
Pool B
Germany 3 – 0 Tunisia
Top scorers: D. Kaliberda 13, M. Popp 11, G. G. Grozer 11; H. Naaga 14, A. Kahdi 10, E. Karamosly 5
Germany cruised to a 3-0 win (25-15, 25-16 and 25-16) over Tunisia to open the fourth round of preliminary action on Saturday morning at Earls Court and improve its record to 2 wins and 2 losses so far in the tournament.
Denys Kaliberda paced Germany with 13 points as Lukas Kampa distributed quite evenly among his spikers with three more finishing the match in double digits, namely Marcus Popp and György Grozer (with 11 apiece) and Marcus Böhme (10). Hamza Nagga was once again Tunisia’s most prolific scorer with 14 points. Germany’s domination at the net is well testified by a total of 14 blocks in three sets with middle blocker Max Günthör the absolute standout in this fundamental with 5.
Russia 3 – 2 USA
Top scorers: M. Mikhajlov 27, S. Tetyukhin 21, A. Volkov 12; M. Anderson 18, C. Stanley 14, D. Lee 12
What a game! Russia recovered from two sets down to beat United States 3-2 (27-29, 19-25, 26-24, 25-16, 15-8) in a match of Pool B of the Olympic Games men’s volleyball tournament that lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes at Earls Court on Saturday. Despite USA was leading 2-0, Russia was able to rise up and win this battle.
Maxim Mikhaylov and Sergey Tetyukhin collected 27 and 21 points respectively to lead the Russian offense while Alexander Volkov and Dmitry Ilinykh contributed 16 and 11.
Brazil 3 -2 Serbia
Top scorers: Sidao 15, Murilo E. 12, L. Vissotto 10; N. Kovacevic 16, A. Atanasijevic 14, M. Podrascanin 11
If you watch such a exciting matches, you are not going to sleep. It was a miraculous day at Earls Court today, finished by Brazilian victory over Serbia (22-25, 25-15, 20-25, 25-22, and 15-9).
Sidnei Dos Santos paced the triple world champions with 15 points, including 6 blocks, while Serbia’s charts were topped by Nikola Kovacevic with 16. Brazil stood out in blocking with and serving to re-start their chase for Olympic glory while Serbia dropped down to 3 losses and 1 win so far in the tournament. Having to play Russia in the last round of the prelims, the chances of the 2011 European champions to make it to the 1/4 finals look very slim, but they shall not be ruled out as on Saturday night they displayed once again all of their well-known fighting spirit.
In order to advance, Serbia need to win over Russia and count that Germany will be beaten by Brazil. Serbia can also lose the last game, however, the team would have to count that Grozer and rest will not gain any points or to get as many small points without losing too many of them to ratio of points scored for the lost finally would be better than German.
Standings
- USA Pts 10
- Russia Pts 8
- Brazil Pts 7
- Germany Pts 5
- Serbia Pts 5
- Tunisia Pts 0
Source: own news/ fivb.org
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