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Before the much anticipated last, final day of the Men’s CEV EuroVolley 2021, it is a good time to look at how great of a tournament it has been. Regardless of what happens today in Katowice, teams and fans who were part of the event will certainly look back to it several years from now.
It’s been a massive EuroVolley edition, involving people from 31 different countries, and which has generated more than 3,000 hours of broadcasting across 95 territories. With 76 matches spread across six different cities and four countries, the EuroVolley has brought the continental elite of the sport back together after two years and checked all the boxes when it comes to a volleyball tournament.
From day one, the tournament brought a lot of exciting matches, combining top level international volleyball and unseen unpredictability, keeping fans at the stadiums or watching at the EuroVolley TV on the edge of their seats.
Until the semifinals, three matches had no more than a single-point difference between the two teams and, funny enough, in two of those the team that had the fewer total ended up winning – that was the case in Latvia’s win against Estonia (90-91) and the Netherlands’ victory over Portugal (104-105).
When it comes to remarkable matches, the duel between Croatia and Latvian on pool play deserves a special mention. The match played in Tallinn in the third day of the event, which ended with the Croatians winning in five sets, was both the one with the most points scored (210) and the longest of the event so far, lasting impressive 155 minutes.
A memorable tournament also has to feature a few upsets here and there and the EuroVolley 2021 didn’t disappoint in that regard. There were two happening almost simultaneously on the third day of the tournament, when Russia, fresh from claiming the silver medal of the Tokyo Olympics, fell to Turkey in Tampere while Slovenia, the silver medalists from the 2019 edition of the tournament, were downed by the Czech Republic in Ostrava.
When it comes to upsets, though, nothing beats the elimination of France in the Eight Finals. The reigning Olympic champions were favorites to take gold but saw their journey in the EuroVolley come to an end in stunning fashion as they were upset by the Czech Republic(again!) in straight sets in Ostrava.
The EuroVolley 2021 Most Valuable Player is yet to be determined and the final matches will have great weight on it, but there was no shortage of fantastic individual performances in the early stages of the tournament.
Dutch scoring machine Nimir Abdel-Aziz starred on many of them, producing as many as four performances in which he produced 30 or more points to his team. The most fantastic of them happened in the Eight Finals, when the 29-year-old opposite left the court after a five-set win over Portugal with 37 points, the highest mark in the entire tournament, 32 of which in kills. He also fired the fastest serve to date, at 139 km/h.
Polish veteran middle blocker Piotr Nowakowski, who enters the semifinals as the top blocker of the tournament, was a wall in the teams’ third match in Krakow, when he registered nine blocks in a 3-1 win against Greece. When it came to serving, the player to look for was Croatian opposite Leo Andric, who scored nine aces against Slovenia in the Eight Finals, but didn’t see his team moving forward. Andric registered six of these aces on the same set and paired with his eight kills, they made of him the top scorer of a single set in the tournament so far with 14 points.
Volleyball is one of the most popular sports in Europe and with the EuroVolley bringing the reigning Olympic, world and continental champions to cities that absolutely love the sport, the result couldn’t be any different.
Polish fans packed the arenas in each of the three cities that hosted their national team
Even if some of the host cities had to run matches with limited capacity for safety, there was great attendance everywhere, most notably in Poland, where whopping 12,707 fans went to the Tauron Arena to watch the duel between the hosts and defending champions Serbia, arguably the most anticipated match of pool play. Expect huge crowds for the EuroVolley Finals in Katowice as well, as tickets are already sold out.
The EuroVolley also showed that no one is too old to come out to the arena and show their love for volleyball as Mrs Pelagia, a passionate, 104-year-old Polish fan followed her national team during their matches in Krakow.
September 18th, 2021
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