Berlin, Germany, January 5, 2020 - Bulgaria survived a roller coaster in Berlin as they beat France in five sets 3-2 (25-23, 17-25, 25-22, 19-25, 15-8).
France coach Laurent Tillie pointed to his team's lack of consistency, but believes his team could still qualify for the semifinals after winning their first match of the CEV tournament against Serbia. “Bulgaria played very well. Good attack, hard service and it went into a really good fight between us. Obviously it was a strange game as we don’t have the consistency at the moment. We have to work on it but we are still alive, so everything is ok and there is still the chance to reach the semis.”
France captain Benjamin Toniutti said his team had been put under a lot of pressure by the Bulgarian team, with Tsvetan Sokolov scoring as many as 23 points. “We knew that they are a team with a good service and they put us under high pressure today. Additionally they made almost no mistakes; we always had bad positions in the attack which made it quite hard to score. Unfortunately we couldn’t manage to complete our comeback.”
For victorious Bulgaria coach Silvano Prandi, it was time to celebrate his team's performance against a strong French team. “Of course I´m happy with the start. My players played a great match. France is a strong team with strong players but we gave everything to start in the best possible way.”
Bulgaria captain Viktor Yosifov agreed, underlining the importance of his team's success at the serve. “It was a crazy and tough match. We beat one of the best teams in Europe. We created a lot of trouble with our service which decided the match in the end. We are happy about the start and hope that we can continue that way.”
Bulgaria play the Netherlands on Tuesday and Serbia on Wednesday, while France play their final match of the tournament on Wednesday against the Netherlands.
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