Welcome to the busiest day of the CEV EuroVolley 2021 Men! The event will have as many as nine matches happening on Friday, involving 18 of the 24 teams entered in the tournament across all four host cities. One of the highlights of the action-packed day is the meeting between Croatia and Germany on Pool D, in Tallinn.
Opposite Tomislav Mitrasinovic, 21, is one of the new faces in Croatia at the EuroVolley 2021
The match will mark the debut of both teams in this year’s edition of the tournament, but for the Croatians it’s also the first opportunity to start writing a new chapter after a frustrating 2015 EuroVolley campaign, which saw the Balkans lose all their three matches in straight sets to finish 15th in their most recent appearance.
The Croatian squad has massively changed since then with only four players remaining on the team for this year’s edition in setter Tsimafei Zhukouski, opposite Ivan Raic, outside hitter Filip Sestan and libero Sven Sarcevic. A new head coach was also brought in Italian Emanuele Zanini and with him at the helm the Croatians finished fourth in this year’s CEV European Silver League – middle blocker Kruno Nikacevic was the best blocker of the tournament.
If Croatia is hoping new faces will bring a different result, Germany expects a familiar one to continue delivering and pushing the team to results like the second-place finish it had on the 2017 EuroVolley. That’s 36-year-old opposite Georg Grozer, who returns to the team for the first time since the Germans failed to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics in January 2020.
Star setter Lukas Kampa is out due to a recent surgery, but head coach Andrea Giani, who won four EuroVolley gold medals during his player career, trusts the experienced core formed by Grozer, outside hitter Christian Fromm and Denis Kaliberda and middle blocker Anton Brehme to keep the team consistent. Before heading to Tallinn, the Germans played in friendly matches against the Netherlands and Belgium besides competing at the Volleyball Nations League, where they were 13th.
“We were able to play a lot of sets, used all players and everyone got some important match rhythm. The entire team performed well and we have a very balanced team, in which everyone knows their roles and has what it takes to fulfill them.”
Andrea Giani
Germany’s Head Coach
