Belchatow ousts Al Arabi

RAAJIV TRIPATHI DOHA

PGE SKRA BELCHATOWdished a high-quality game to beat Al Arabi Club, who was dreaming to reach the semi-finals of the FIVB World Clubs Men’s Volleyball Championship. At the Women’s Sports Club on Wednesday, the twice runner-up from Poland won the final group match by 25-18 25- 17 16-25 25-17 in 90 minutes.

This victory sent Belchatow to the top of the group B with a clean record. Zenit Kazan finished second, followed by Al Arabi and Al Zamalek.

In the semi-finals on Thursday, Trentino Diatec (Italy) will take on Zenit Kazan (Russia) and Belchatow is to clash with Sada Cruzeiro Volei (Brazil).

The women’s semi-finals pit Sollys Nestle (Brazil) against Lancheras de Catano (Puerto Rico) and Fenerbahce (Turkey) against Rabita Baku (Azerbaijan).

A potent attack and solid defence kept Belchatow, who were runner-up to thrice winner Trentino of Italy in 2009 and 2010, ahead in the first two sets. It went on to clinch them easily, which assured them a place into the Thursday’s semi-finals. Then Arabi put up some good smashes through Christian Pampel, Ahmed al Bakhet, Matti Oivanen and Ibrahim Mohamed to win the third set.

In the fourth and last set, in which Arabi came once within levelling the scores at 16, CEV Champions League runner-up Belchatow against pulled away through Aleksandar Atanasijevic, who scored 19 points in the entire match, to emerge the worthy winner.

Other principal scorers for the Polish team were captain Mariusz Wlazly (14), Michal Winiarski (11) and Daniel Plinski (10).

Pampel led the scoring for Arabi with 17. Bakhet (11), Mohamed Ibrahim (10) and Ribeiro Renan (8) made good capital of the opportunity and collected useful points.

Arabi coach Mauro Grasso said he was happy for the local players to get a chance to play in this highprofile competition and learn.

ìThere was a big difference between his players and the Belchatow players. The European team had players who have been playing in the world, Olympic and European events. Except for libero Richard Lambourne and setter Dante Boninfante, we did not have enough players of high calibre to match the rivals.

“But I’m glad that some local players also got the taste of this event. I hope this opportunity will help them in future,” added Brazilian Grasso.

Earlier, European champion and last year’s finalist Zenit Kazan hardly exerted itself and crushed African champion Al Zamalek by 25-13 25-19 25-14 to conclude its pool league engagements. The 68- minute match enabled the Russian team to finish with seven points from 2-1 win-loss record.

Zenit began with determination and dexterity and kept the Egyptian rivals, back into the contest after a gap of two years, on back-foot for most of the time.

Related Posts

Post a Comment

Subscribe Our Newsletter