Croatia 2017 NT

  • Croatian NT starter their preparation before 6 days ago for WGP. And this are the girls that are right now with team.


    S: Matea Curak, Lara Štimac
    OH: Lucija Mlinar, Katarina Pavicic, Jelena Sunjic, Tea Juric
    OPP: Katarina Luketic, Lara Vukasovic
    MB: Ema Strunjak, Lara Dezulovic
    L: Nikolina Bozicevic


    And girls who will join NT very soon are: Samanta Fabris(c), Rene Sain(L), Natalia Tomic(OH) and Bozena Butigan(MB)


    Ok, they want to give young girls a chance but I still don't get them when we talk about setter position. Klara Peric is not even in wide-roster and they didn't call Vedrana Jaksetic. Jaksetic is not great setter but she is still way better than disaster Curak. I can't believe that this girls is playing as setter more than 3 years and that She is still playing so bad. I don't know anything about Lara Štimac...


    Secondly I can't wait to see what will show Tea Juric, Lara Vukasovic( who played also as OH) and Jelena Sunjic. They are coming from USA colleges and all of them were part of our younger NTs.
    A lot of people talk about Natalia Tomic(OH) She is only 15 years old, She played for U18 NT and She is already with senior NT. Lets See how Will she develop.
    Their will no be a lot of diffrents from roster at last QT for WCH, only Grbac will be missing from starting six. I think this is ok but still without good setter you can't show any good game.


    Samanta Fabris was leading our NT before and now She will need to do much more.

  • I just know that Aksentijevic didn't like her performance at WGP 2015 i Think...and that She is not kind of setter that He like so that He don't want to call her in NT.


    And He got in to the fight with Klara Peric and that is why She left NT before QT WCH.

  • I just know that Aksentijevic didn't like her performance at WGP 2015 i Think...and that She is not kind of setter that He like so that He don't want to call her in NT.


    And He got in to the fight with Klara Peric and that is why She left NT before QT WCH.


    So what that says to you? Where is the problem, coach or players? Small personal interests coming before NT and while is like that we can't go forward. It's tragic and pathetic to listen about renovation when there is no need for that in certain positions.

  • Yes I agree with you. First thing that I would do Is to resolve Aksentijevic from NT coach. He is far from what we need.

  • Yes I agree with you. First thing that I would do Is to resolve Aksentijevic from NT coach. He is far from what we need.


    Well, since he came under Barač I'm close to think Baković will try to get rid of him but dunno for how long Aksa is under contract. Regarding that I heard that Aksentijević came as a part of a deal because Barač wanted to become CEV board member :whistle: Rumors can be easily true IMO.

  • Unfortunately, Aksa have contract to 2020. He goes to "renovation" not because he want that. Lot of girls dont want to play,so he need to call this young girls and girls from college(dont except anything big from them). I could list whole new team of girls which are not called because of nonvolley reasons.

  • Croatia come to Argentine to play WGP with super young team, average of our NT is 19 years old. Even I don't know many of this players so I will wait till first official match at Friday against Poland.



    New captain of NT is Lucija Mlinar (OH). Youngest girl Natalia Tomic(OH) has only 15 years old and She is youngest player that EVER played for our NT.


    We played first friendly match against Argentina and we beat them 3:1 (25:23, 25:21, 22:25, 25:16). We will play one more match before WGP officialy starts against Argentina again. This is very good news even if this is friendly match. As I said I see potential but you need to work a lot with this girls because they are so young. Maybe it is paying off. We will see it is still too early to say anything.



    First task We will have against strong Poland, even Poland is not strong team if you compare them with Serbia, Russia, Turkey and others, but for us they are. So if We won only 1 set against them we can be happy for NOW.



    For ECH Mia Jerkov, Ivana Milos, Samanta Fabris will be back. So this is perfect time to see how will this girl progress in this 3 weeks. This matches are on much higher level than what they used to play in our league so I can't wait to watch them :)

  • After a long time, Matea Ikic is back with NT. I didn't see her playing for long time so I don't know anything about her game, but as always She can help us a lot with her reception and defence.


    Katarina Barun, Ivana Milos, Ana Grbac and Bernarda Cutuk (She was not with NT for long time, but for me She doesn't have place in NT anymore but ok)




    Mia Jerkovi is not with NT. To bad Jerkov - Ikic could be very good OH duo...

  • HUGE SCANDAL happend yesterday. Croatia lost head coach Aksentijevic after he tryed rape one of the players. Name is still unkonw. New head coach is Igor Lovrinov. That is great news but after this situation I don't know how will girl react. :S

  • If it's true then it's really disgusting, BUT: Google tells me that he allegedly "touched" a player in her room which is still something different than "tried to rape".


    And I have a major deja-vu of the Dragutin Baltic story. He was also accused of a similar story several years ago and if I remember well it turned out that players invented it to get rid of him or at least something in that direction...
    Some articles about the Baltic story:
    http://www.bgvolleyball.com/en/new.php?id=5669
    http://www.novinite.com/articl…+Wasn%27t+Sexting+Players
    https://www.vesti.rs/odbojka/B…sve-je-kriv-Georgije.html


    EDIT: Apparently eventually it turned out that Mariya Filipova's boyfriend sent the messages to the players back then.

  • Oh dear, that's for sure... Something.


    Horrible to hear especially for the girl involved but I also have to say Matthias is making a good point here. This is really bad if it turns out to be real but I honestly have the feeling it's a bit 'staged'. Nonetheless let's be honest here, this will be good for Croatian NT. :whistle:

  • That is true. Igor Lovrinov is Croatian best coach rigt now. When he was head coach in 2013., Croatia was 5th in 2013. And after that He got in too fight with our federation and He got fired.

  • Finally this happened but maybe too late. This summer our physio also had something with other player but that wasnt in the news. I know both names but wouldnt say.


    Atmosphere in team is awful , they are training two days and then have two days off. They dont even have lunch and dinner together. You have situation that club from Zagreb who is training at same place 4 hours at day and our national team works 4 hours in four days. Unfortunately our coach choose 14 players week ago. Lovrinov will do everything he can but if they are ready for european championship.


    They lost 0-4 with Czech Republic and 0-4 with Azerbaijan and crovolley is writing here that we are better and better hahahhha. Anyone who have some information know that we are in very bad shape.

  • yeah and second match against Cze was 2:2 same as Aze, your point ?
    Ne kuzim sto hoces reci da lazem ili ? To rezultati govore, ne govorim ja.

    Finally this happened but maybe too late. This summer our physio also had something with other player but that wasnt in the news. I know both names but wouldnt say.


    Atmosphere in team is awful , they are training two days and then have two days off. They dont even have lunch and dinner together. You have situation that club from Zagreb who is training at same place 4 hours at day and our national team works 4 hours in four days. Unfortunately our coach choose 14 players week ago. Lovrinov will do everything he can but if they are ready for european championship.


    They lost 0-4 with Czech Republic and 0-4 with Azerbaijan and crovolley is writing here that we are better and better hahahhha. Anyone who have some information know that we are in very bad shape

  • Roster for ECH 2017


    OPP: Samanta Fabris, Katarina Barun, Katarina Luketic
    S: Ana Grbac, Marsela Šaini
    OH: Matea Ikic, Lucija Mlinar, Nika Stanović
    MB: Ivana Milos, Bernarda Cutuk, Ema Strunjak, Beta Dumancic
    L: Nikolina Bozicevic, Rene Sain


    Probably starting six


    Grbac(S)-Barun(OPP)
    Fabris(OH)-Ikic(OH)
    Milos(MB)-Cutuk(MB)
    Sain(L)


    We will see what Lovrinov will decide but this is the "main" starting six when Aksentijevic was head coach, He can't change a lot of thing in this short period, only what He can choose is position at MB and L. Strunjak as second main MB, and Bozicevic as main libero.