Hungary
Tomorrow, in the first semifinal at 17:00 by local time Bulgaria will face Finland. These two teams are the winners of the Pool A and Pool B and if we analyze the results from the pools, Bulgaria have a little advantage. They lost only one match against Azerbaijan, from the team that could also end up at the final tournament considering that they have the same number of win and loss and the number of points as Bulgaria. But they lost two sets more and that fact didn’t allow them to come to Budapest.
Ivan Petkov, head coach of Bulgaria: “This trophy, that I am looking at right now, is very beautiful. Of course, we are happy to be here and to play in the Final Four of the #EuroLeagueW. Our main goal is winning the trophy, but I must say, that we respect a lot the other teams, so we will see what tomorrow will bring.”
On the other side, Finland didn’t have a rival for the F4 since that in their pool were Hungary who finished in the second place. Croatia and France were too weak for them. Finland are the silver medal winners from the 2017 European League while Hungary won the 2015 edition of this competition.
Finland have the third-best scorer of EL, Piia Korhonen who won 95 points in six matches but Bulgaria have the best blocker of the competition, Hristina Ruseva who scored 33 blocks.
In the second semifinal match, that is scheduled for 20:00, the hosts will play against the Chezch Republic, the only team that finished pool’s stage with all six wins.
Jan De Brandt, head coach of Hungary: “We are really happy to be the host of this event and to organize the Final Four of #EuroLeagueW, but we want to do something more here, to achieve something more. If you are the organizer, you have only one goal – to play the final. Czech Republic is a strong opponent, so it will be a tough match tomorrow.”
This will be the first-ever European League final tournament in this format and under this name. The eventual winners, but also the silver medalists, will contest the inaugural FIVB Challenger Cup (June 20-25 in Lima, Peru), along with Kazakhstan (Asia), Colombia (South America), Puerto Rico (NORCECA), and hosts Peru.
The team that wins the Challenger Cup will face the last-placed challenger team at the 2018 FIVB Nations League for a spot at the 2019 edition of the tournament.
See schedule and results, as well as stats of CEV Golden European League.
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