End of the round: The German volleyball players clearly missed out on a surprise and, as expected, were eliminated in the first knockout round of the European Championships. The team of national coach Vital Heynen lost 0:3 (22:25, 20:25, 24:26) to favorite Poland in the neighborhood duel in Brussels and, like two years ago, missed the round of the top eight.
“We missed a huge chance, Poland didn’t have a good day today,” said Lena Stigrot: “But we didn’t manage to take advantage of it. We didn’t play well.”
The defeat was also overshadowed by the suspected serious knee injury to outside attacker Anne Hölzig. “It hit us all really hard, it didn’t look good,” said the captain.
This ended a very disappointing tournament for the selection of the German Volleyball Association (DVV). Without the injured top player Hanna Orthmann, Germany had only finished the preliminary round group C in front of their home crowd in Düsseldorf’s Castello with two wins and three defeats in a weak third place.
The goal of collecting important points for the world rankings and thus putting yourself in a better position for a possible Olympic qualification via the ranking was clearly missed.
The focus of the German team is now on the second possible route to Paris: From September 16th to 24th, Germany will be fighting five other teams in Lodz, Poland, for two of the coveted Olympic tickets.
DVV team with the courage of desperation
In the Belgian capital, the DVV women went into the neighborhood duel as clear outsiders. “Poland are the big favorites against us,” Heynen emphasized before the game.
Initially, however, it was a lot of mistakes that made Germany fall behind. The Heynen team then fought their way into the game step by step, with Lina Alsmeier in particular convincing as she scored points. In the end, too many German mistakes prevented the set from being won, and Poland took the lead with a score of 25:22.
Germany started much better in the second set, with the DVV women initially pulling away 6:2. But the momentum didn’t last long, the Poles quickly turned the set clearly in their direction. Germany didn’t give up, but was then unable to catch up from the big deficit.
With their backs to the wall, Heynen’s team braced themselves against the impending defeat – but then had to cope with Hölzig’s end in the hard-fought third round. Despite the shock, Germany stayed close to the favourites, but the quality of the Poles put an early end to the German dream of the European Championship.