Turkey
In front of their own fans, the Latvians won the return match of the clash in exciting five sets, but could not follow through in the crucial golden set. Turkey will have to face France, Slovakia and hosts Poland in the battles of Pool B in Gdansk starting on September 20.
Latvia vs. Turkey 3:2 (25-19, 21-25, 27-29, 25-16, 15-13)
Golden Set 10-15
In a very emotional second-leg match Latvia defeated Turkey in five sets, but then the visitors managed to win the golden set and claim the last ticket to the European Championship.
The best scorer of the six sets was Emre Batur with 21 points for Turkey. Latvia’s opposite Hermans Egleskalns tallied 20 points. Serhat Coskun was the best spiker with 17 kills for the winning team. Burutay Subasi managed five aces to become the best server of the match. The best blocker was Hermans Egleskalns with 4 kill blocks.
For the first time in many years the competition hall was completely sold out for a volleyball match. A record number of spectators – 3800, attended the game and the atmosphere was amazing. This, however, did not help the home team in the golden set.
Hakan Ozkan, assistant coach of Turkey: “The main reasons why we won were the fast attack and the good serves.”
Raimonds Vilde, head coach of Latvia: “The result of the match depended on many little things. We did not do our job well through the end. We could be in the European Championship Final Round, but we did not do everything we could to get there.”
Find the full stats from this game on Statistics.
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