Turkey – France
Actually Turkey caught a good start by exploiting some problems France was struggling with in defense, before Christina Bauer changed gear and France could move the score from 8 all to a quite impressive 16:10 by the second technical time-out. With Turkey helping with some service errors, France stretched that lead to 19:11 and it was Bauer that contributed the next three points with a good block and two spikes for the 22:12. Turkey attempted a late comeback but Hélène Schleck finished it off for France by the score of 25-15.
France stormed out to 4:0 in the second set before Turkey got back on track leveling at 7 all. It was once again France that imposed its pace going up 13:9 and 16:12, but Turkey was once again able to claw back, reducing the gap to only one point (18:17). However, once again the young Turks did not show real consistency and composure throughout the set and their many mistakes contributed the final 25-18 for France.
France got up 8:6 in set 3 and gradually opened that cushion (11:7) before Turkey stormed back to 11:10. However, similarly to the previous sets, Turkey could not keep up that pace and France did cruise away quite confidently (19:12) to deservedly finish the game in straight sets via a Turkish spike that fell off the court (25-15).
France’s top scorer Hélène Schleck (13 points) said: “We were really frustrated after losing that tie-break to Bulgaria on Saturday. However, even though we had little time to recover, also physically, we started the match with the right approach and we made only a few mistakes. We imposed our pace and Turkey helped us today with their many errors”.
