RRI Sports Club

Volleyball

Steliu Lambru, 29.08.2018, 12:38

Romania’s national men’s volleyball team has qualified to the European Championship after 23 years. On Sunday they defeated the Finish team in Craiova, in southern Romania, in the preliminaries’ Group A with the score 3-1, with 26-24, 25-22, 20-25 and 25-21 in the sets. The best players of the Romanian team were Robert Adrian Aciobăniţei, Răzvan Olteanu and Laurenţiu Lică while the scorers of the Finish team were Urpo Sivula and Elviss Krastins. According to the Romanian team’s coach, Dănuţ Pascu, the Romanians’ match confirmed the result they obtained in Finland when they proved a strong adversary for the Finish team whom they defeated.

Following this match with Finland, Romania is ranked 1st in the group with 7 points from 3 matches, then comes Finland with 4 points from 3 matches and Denmark with 1 point from 2 matches. The Romanians will play their last match in early January 2019 in Denmark. The winners of the preliminary groups and the five best teams ranked 2nd in the groups are qualified to the final, to be hosted by Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Slovenia between September 12 and 29.

In the women’s competition, Romania’s national team defeated the national Latvian team also on Sunday in Latvia with the score 3-0, 25-13, 25-13, 25-15 in the sets. The match counted for group F of the preliminaries of the 2019 European Championship. In another match of the group, the Spanish team defeated the team of Bosnia Herzegovina 3-1 in an away match. In the group F rankings, Romania leads with 10 points, being followed by Spain with 9 points, Bosnia Herzegovina with 5 points and Latvia with 0 points.

In the next matches Romania will be up against Spain on home ground on January 6, 2019 and away from home against Bosnia’s team on January 9. Romania has high chances for qualification. The first 2 teams from each of the 6 preliminary groups will qualify to the final tournament to be hosted by Turkey, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.