Pool A
SPAIN – AZERBAIJAN 3-0 (25-22, 25-22, 25-12)
Spanish star Ana Escamilla, who played with Unet e-work Busto Arsizio last season, led Spain to victory over Azerbaijan. With 42 winning spikes, against 28 of the Azerbaijan team, Spain temporarily lead Pool A.
Pool A
ROMANIA – FRANCE 3–2 (17-25, 23-25, 26-24, 26-24, 15-11)
The young Romanian talent Alexia Ioana Carutasu (27 points) was one of the major protagonists of the marathon (122 mins) that was held at the BT Arena CLUJ NAPOCA between the hosts and the French team capitained by Helena Cazaute.
Pool B
BULGARIA – SLOVAKIA 3-0 (25-14, 26-24, 25-15)
This was the twelfth match between the women’s national teams of Bulgaria and Slovakia and the tenth victory for Bulgaria. The last previous match took place in 2014 in Samokov (BUL) during the qualification for the World Championship, when the home country won 3-1.
Bulgaria finished the match with 15 winning blocks.
Today, the experienced Slovak outside hitter Dominika Drob?áková played her first official match in two years after recovering from knee injury, she was sidelined since April 2019 and missed CEV EuroVolley 2019 in Bratislava because of this injury.
Pool C
CROATIA – HUNGARY 2-3 (26-24, 20-25, 31-29, 21-25, 11-15)
Croatia wanted to follow the silver success of the last edition of GEL, while Hungary finished fifth in 2019.
During the first set it was the Hungarian team who dominated for a long time – but Hungary did not keep the leadership despite a 21-14 advantage and it was finally Croatia who took the set. The second part was completely the opposite and this time it was Hungary who managed to turn the development of the set for itself. The battle continued with the teams fighting as much as possible and the match had to be decided at the tie-break. After 140 minutes it was finally Hungary who won the opening drama.
