Germany’s volleyball players also won their second game at the Olympic qualifying tournament in Rio de Janeiro. The DVV selection around star attacker Georg Grozer prevailed against Cuba on Sunday (10/01/23) in Rio de Janeiro with 3:1 (21:25, 25:14, 25:22, 25:15) and made one another step on the desired path to Paris.
“Cuba served really well in the first set and fended off everything”said Johannes Tille, “We know that we can play good volleyball, but also have a lot of ups and downs.” Regarding the loss of the first set, the setter said: “We came back and put our stamp on the game from the second set onwards – then they couldn’t do much more.”said Tille.
Germany didn’t get off to a good start and initially lost out against the twelfth place in the world rankings. But after that, the DVV selection took the initiative and never allowed Cuba to come back. The best scorer was by far Georg Grozer, who scored 24 points alone.
At the start, national coach Michal Winiarski’s team managed a 3-1 win against Iran, but after Saturday’s victory they only had a short time to recover.
Seven games within nine days
The national team around the 38-year-old Grozer, who returned especially for the Olympic qualification, has to play seven games in just nine days in Rio and come at least second in the field of eight in order to be allowed to go to Paris next year. If that doesn’t work, the only option left is the difficult path through the world rankings, which currently doesn’t seem very promising. The last time a German team made it to the Summer Games in London was in 2012.