Eurovolley 2019: Fantastic Serbia! By defeating Slovenia, they conquer EuroVolley for 3rd time!

Serbia National Team conquered the 2019 CEV European Volleyball Championship!
The Serbian nation is an absolute ruler of European volleyball in 2019: less than a month ago, its female national team defended the continental title, while tonight their male colleagues also won the same competition for the best team in Europe….and the same thing happened in 2011!

Serbia overhelmed Slovenia in the final of the 2019 EuroVolley in front of the packed stands at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris (12,654 spectators) on which Slovenian fans out-numbered Serbian by far, with a 3-1 (19:25, 25:16, 25:18, 25:20).
Slovenia dominated the opening set but Serbia recovered quickly, making huge gap in the middle of each of the remaining three sets mostly thanks to blocking and serving, Serbia had eighth or nine set points in those sets which say enough on their superiority.
Led by Slobodan Kovač, who took over the bench of Serbia only a month ago, Serbia start to play a really amazing match with Uroš Kovačević that was in charge of converting impossible points tonight, making Slovenian defense powerless on really lot of occasions.
There were some tensions on the net between players of the two opposing sides at 23:16 and 23:17 for Serbia in the fourth set, which ended with a couple of yellow cards. Serbia’s captain Nemanja Petrić closed the match with two straight points, including the ace for the European title, the third ever for his national team!

Aleksandar Atanasijević was the top scorer for the winners with 22 points including 4 winning blocks, while Kovačević scored 20 points, including 4 winning blocks as well. Klemen Čebulj scored 15 and Alen Pajenk 12 points for Slovenia of which 5 were blocks.

Uros Kovacevic – Serbia’s outside hitter:
“I already felt this one time, but I was on the bench. It’s so much better when you play and feel the atmosphere. I’m proud of my teammates, my staff, my country. This is an incredible experience for all of us because nobody expected us to win except us, and we did it. Slovenia started to play very well in front of a lot of Slovenian fans, then we played point by point, and we won, I don’t want to say easily, but we were up in each set from the beginning. Now we have the Olympic qualifier in January, with France, Slovenia, and other great teams, but if we did this, we can also do it then.”

Jani Kovacic – Slovenia’s libero:
“For sure, we are disappointed because we wanted to win this final, to put gold on our necks, but today Serbia did a very good job, and we were not like in Ljubljana, we didn’t play so good, so they deserve this.”

Marko Podrascanin – Serbia’s middle blocker:
“The game against France was very important. Today we were favourite, we believed in us throughout the tournament, even after losing the first set. They played really well, but in the final, you need to play your best volleyball to win. Three weeks after our women won the European championship, we win too, eight years after.”