Nicosia, Cyprus. The very first EuroVolley 2021 Men Qualifier begins on Sunday in Nicosia with Cyprus playing Spain and Latvia locking horns with Moldova earlier in the afternoon. Live streaming of all matches is available on EuroVolleyTV, while 7Sports TV will broadcast the games in Cyprus. The eventual pool winners will qualify for the final stage of EuroVolley co-hosted by Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland in the late summer of 2021.
Moldova and Latvia will open the programme of the qualifier at 5 pm local time, with Moldova hoping to use their height to take the first victory and three points in the pool. “The tournament takes place under very special conditions and we have to follow all protocols,” says the head coach of Moldova, Artur Romascan. “Despite everything, we came here to play Volleyball and we will try to qualify for next year’s EuroVolley. The foundations of Latvian Volleyball lie in the Soviet school and they have many players competing in some strong leagues abroad. We hope to be as competitive as possible,” he continued.
“We will fight for the victory in each match, but this is a very competitive tournament and we will see how far we can go,” said Latvian Team Manager Arturs Vitkovskis. “Our team is a mix of young and experienced players and our goal is to build a group with good perspectives for the future. Moldova is a strong team with tall players and they deserve much respect and attention. It is the first match in the tournament and any opening match is special in its own way.”
Later in the evening, starting at 8 pm local time, hosts Cyprus will play a very challenging match with Spain. The hosts coached by Jorge Cannestracci will measure up their strength after previously playing a couple of friendly matches with the Red Lynxes. Spain competed at last year’s EuroVolley and they are the pre-favourites of the pool. They arrived in Cyprus on Wednesday already to contest two sparring matches with the home team.
“It is very nice that we have the opportunity to host and compete at this tournament,” Cannestracci said. “We need people to come and support us in order to achieve the best possible result. As for Spain, I like their style of playing. They have many professional players and after playing two friendly matches earlier this week, this will be a serious one for sure.” “We are ready for the upcoming matches. As for the match with Spain, we will try to make as few mistakes as possible and to surprise them,” said Cyprus player Sotiris Siapanis.
“We are the favourites but we played two friendly matches with Cyprus earlier this week and we could see with our own eyes that they are a quality team,” said Spain head coach Ricardo Maldonado. “This means that we have to show our best side. It is obviously difficult to play in times of coronavirus but we have to make do with the current conditions. Our goal is to qualify for the final stage of EuroVolley but we will take it one match at a time.”
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Sources:
CEV – European Volleyball
Cyprus Volleyball Federation
