European Championships - 2013 - hosts Denmark and Poland

  • It is very natural to think that a big guy is overall a more secure solution for the opposite position.


    Overall, volleyball is a game of points. It doesn't matter if the player is big or not. Sokolov is not the best player, but scoring 35 points to Poland is quite an achievement. The problem is that he is inconsistent. Pavlov on the other hand didn't score 35 point in a single game but he was stable and focused during the whole tournament. He even scored the final point after the two unsuccessful Grankin's attempts to make the gold point with Musersky.


    There is a lot of crying these days in Bulgaria for the 4th place. But it is better to be 4th in Europe than watching the finals on tv. Now for 2 years we became 4th three times on high level tournaments and I think that we should respect the Bulgarian team for this achievement. The football team reached the 4th place in USA'94 World cup and this still is considered as one of the greatest Bulgarian sport achievements. Now the volleyball team is 4th in Europe and instead of congratulations the most journalistic article headlines are "Again 4th".

  • Overall, volleyball is a game of points. It doesn't matter if the player is big or not. Sokolov is not the best player, but scoring 35 points to Poland is quite an achievement. The problem is that he is inconsistent. Pavlov on the other hand didn't score 35 point in a single game but he was stable and focused during the whole tournament. He even scored the final point after the two unsuccessful Grankin's attempts to make the gold point with Musersky.


    There is a lot of crying these days in Bulgaria for the 4th place. But it is better to be 4th in Europe than watching the finals on tv. Now for 2 years we became 4th three times on high level tournaments and I think that we should respect the Bulgarian team for this achievement. The football team reached the 4th place in USA'94 World cup and this still is considered as one of the greatest Bulgarian sport achievements. Now the volleyball team is 4th in Europe and instead of congratulations the most journalistic article headlines are "Again 4th".


    Completely agree with what you said.

  • Won't comment much. It wasn't the happiest ECh. It's a pity that France had to face Russia in QF and then drop out from the competition. It would be much more interesting later with them. Congrats for Russia. The best team for sure. Dima is a king :thumbup: I didn't "feel" Italians' game this time. Completely. They weren't the strongest. Though Vettori was really exciting to watch. As for Bulgarians... I really have no words. I can't express in any way how sad I am. Ehhh. In the end I'm at least happy that NT season is finally over. Tragic year for us.

  • Last days I was so busy, so I couldn't do it earlier, but I made individual stats, not counting Group Stage. Let's check who was the best and where were players which got awards from CEV:


    INDIVIDUAL STATS:
    Best Scorers:
    1. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 97 - winner
    2. Luca Vettori (ITA) 79
    3. Aleksandar Atanasijevic (SRB) 71 - got award
    4. Nikolay Pavlov (RUS) 70
    5. Dimitriy Muserskiy (RUS) 62


    Best Scorers/Set:
    1. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 5.71
    2. Aleksandar Atanasijevic (SRB) 5.07
    3. Luca Vettori (ITA) 4.94
    4. Nikolay Pavlov (RUS) 4.67
    5. Dimitriy Muserskiy (RUS) 4.13


    Best Scorers-Errors:
    1. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 60
    2. Nikolay Pavlov (RUS) 58
    3. Luca Vettori (ITA) 52
    4. Dimitriy Muserskiy (RUS) 45
    5. Aleksandar Atanasijevic (SRB) 38
    5. Emmanuele Birarelli (ITA) 38


    Best Scorers (Break Points)
    1. Dimitriy Muserskiy (RUS) 36
    2. Luca Vettori (ITA) 35
    3. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 30
    4. Nikolay Pavlov (RUS) 25
    5. Ivan Zaytsev (ITA) 22


    Best Scorers (Break Points/Set);
    1. Dimitriy Muserskiy (RUS) 2.4
    2. Luca Vettori (ITA) 2.19
    3. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 1.76
    4. Nikolay Pavlov (RUS) 1.67
    5. Ivan Zaytsev (ITA) 1.38


    Best Servers/Set:
    1. Dimitriy Muserskiy (RUS) 0.533 - winner
    2. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 0.529
    3. Ivan Zaytsev (ITA) 0.5 - got award
    4. Evgeny Sivozhelez (RUS) 0.47
    5. Nikolay Apalikov (BUL) 0.4


    The Most Serve Errors Per Set:
    1. Aleksandar Atanasijevic (SRB) 1.29
    2. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 1.24
    3. Luca Vettori (ITA) 0.94
    4. Evgeny Sivozhelez (RUS) 0.93
    5. Viktor Yosifov (BUL) 0.82


    Best Blockers/Set:
    1. Dimitriy Muserskiy (RUS) 1.07 - winner
    2. Viktor Yosifov (BUL) 0.76
    3. Marko Podrascanin (SRB) 0.64
    3. Srecko Lisinac (SRB) 0.64 - got award
    5. Thomas Beretta (ITA) 0.63


    Best Receivers (Excellent %, min. 25% of all team's receptions):
    1. Evgeny Sivozhelez (RUS) 26.7 - winner
    2. Salvatore Rossini (ITA) 24.7
    3. Milos Nikic (SRB) 24.1
    4. Todor Aleksiev (BUL) 21.3 - got award
    5. Todor Skrimov (BUL) 19.2


    The Most Reception Errors Per Set:
    1. Ivan Zaytsev (ITA) 0.94
    2. Nikola Kovacevic (SRB) 0.57
    3. Alexey Spiridonov (RUS) 0.533
    4. Todor Skrimov (BUL) 0.529
    5. Jiri Kovar (CZE) 0.38


    Best Spikers (Spike %, min. 15% of all team's spikes):
    1. Nikola Kovacevic (SRB) 54.7 - winner* (though he had relatively low amount of attempts, comparing with Atanasijevic, Vettori, Pavlov or Sokolov - because of this I wouldn't give him award)
    2. Aleksandar Atanasijevic (SRB) 52.9 - I'd give him award
    3. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 50
    4. Todor Skrimov (BUL) 48.6
    5. Luca Vettori (ITA) 48.3 - got award


    The Most Spike Errors Per Set:
    1. Aleksandar Atanasijevic (SRB) 1.07
    2. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 0.94
    3. Luca Vettori (ITA) 0.75
    4. Alexey Spiridonov (RUS) 0.73
    5. Milos Nikic (SRB) 0.57


    The Most Errors Per Set:
    1. Aleksandar Atanasijevic (SRB) 2.36
    2. Ivan Zaytsev (ITA) 2.25
    3. Tsvetan Sokolov (BUL) 2.18
    4. Alexey Spiridonov (RUS) 2
    5. Luca Vettori (ITA) 1.69


    Awards by CEV (in brackets who should get it): - I agree with their other choices
    Best Spiker: Vettori (Atanasijevic)
    Best Server: Zaytsev (Muserskiy)
    Best Blocker: Lisinac (Muserskiy)
    Best Receiver: Aleksiev (Sivozhelez)
    Best Scorer: Atanasijevic (Sokolov)


    If CEV had used only stats noone from Italians would have got an award! As we can see Muserskiy was the best also in Break Point scores, thanks to strong serve, blocks and many successful spikes during counter attack ^^

    Gold medal - World League 2013 Prediction Game
    Bronze medal - World League 2012 Prediction Game

  • There is a lot of crying these days in Bulgaria for the 4th place. But it is better to be 4th in Europe than watching the finals on tv. Now for 2 years we became 4th three times on high level tournaments and I think that we should respect the Bulgarian team for this achievement. The football team reached the 4th place in USA'94 World cup and this still is considered as one of the greatest Bulgarian sport achievements. Now the volleyball team is 4th in Europe and instead of congratulations the most journalistic article headlines are "Again 4th".

    The outcry is because the volleyball team gets into semis regularly, it is not their once-in-the-history achievement. Actually, nothing bad in that as the pressure is always needed.


    You should read Russian media as the biggest newsmaker was Spirik with his locker room photo. "The volleyball NT member took a naked picture with EC cup" was everywhere but "The volleyball NT won the EC" didn't make it to the top news. There is also plenty of audio/video interviews where journalists confuse the volleyball NT with the basketball NT... Nobody cares really. By the way, nothing bad in that too. The yoghurt ad track seems to have some pitfalls :).

  • There is also plenty of audio/video interviews where journalists confuse the volleyball NT with the basketball NT


    Yeah. I remember when in 2007 in one and the same day were held ECH volleyball and basketball final. Both finals were Russia vs Spain and were held in Russia and Spain. Russia took the gold at EuroBasket in Spain and out of a sudden Spain took the gold in Russia at EuroVolley. Some, so called journalists, completely messed up the finals and especially volleyball one. Because who could imagine that Spain will beat Russia in Russia at volleyball final and for a while Russia was on paper volleyball Euro Champion. Аs well as the famous story about football victory of the United States over England 1:0 in 1950, when the English media decided there is a misprint in that 1:0 and wrote 1:10 for England.

  • i have a question about the placement of teams below the top 4. here in wikipedia,


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2…n_Volleyball_Championship



    they have placements for the teams, e.g. france 5th, germany 6th, etc. but there were no playoff and placement matches for those positions. are these positions official? i always wonder if there are no matches, shouldn't it be then that 4 teams finished tied for 5th, and 4 teams finished 9th, etc.?????? are these placements official or is it a wikipedia error (of which, you should know, there are lots)?

  • Actually, I would be more critical to Sokolov. When you are quiet in both F4 games you can't claim you had a great tournament. He had, however, a good tournament, too bad it ended in a different way. I agree with the rest. I mentioned the 30+ thing because Pavlov is not the kind of opposite who will ever do something of the type, but, let's face it, he will never have to. First, because both Russian NT and his club team are not that strongly dependent on him, he has a different role. Second, because he has other values that make him an unique player. I agree about Skrimov and those two mistakes, as far as I remember he was substituted immediately afterwards. He didn't have the brightest final weekend (though more reliable before Copenhagen) either, but neither did many of his teammates.


    I am sorry for the sarcasm. You see it can work out without it just as well :)


    About what raylight stated. I don't quite agree. After Miljkovic, Wlazly, Nikolov retired from their NTs and with the current shape of Mikhaylov, it is difficult to say who the best opposite nowadays is. Many coaches are courteous enough to vote for Sokolov, playing it also on the safe side when he has a day against their teams. But to enumerate Sokolov in the list among the aforementioned (or to say that he is indeed THE best) he will need to show us a little more. And you know very well what I mean.


    I mentioned the individual prizes earlier. Journalists at Parken were allowed to vote for Best Setter, MVP and Best Libero. The rest have been assigned according to statistics. I haven't checked all the numbers, I can't say much about them. OK, a Fair Play award was weird, but who cares. My votes went for Grankin (Setter), Muserskiy (MVP) and Rossini (Libero). Verbov got it instead of Rossini, perhaps many of the Italian journalists did not vote :)


    Compliments for the great tournament Nikola Jovovic had. I often criticized him when I watched him in the Bundesliga, he is starting to grow as a setter.


    Last, I don't know if you guys noticed how inefficient the Bulgarian triple block was. It kept me wondering throughout those 10 days how they never (very probable) made a block when three people waited for the attack. Placi is not doing a bad job with the team, but I doubt he, as an original analyser, not a coach, could significantly improve such details.

  • I am not 100% sure, but I think it's based on points taken, set ratio, quarterfinal results and so on. I doubt it is random. The positions are official, yes. Maybe it should be a tie indeed, sounds more fair.

  • hi yavor, i understand that that is how they can break ties, but my question was whether that was officially sanctioned by CEV.


    i think in the past in some tournaments, four teams would finish officially 5th if there were no playoffs and matches to decide positions, for example, no?


    PS: is yavor the bulgarian form of igor?

  • Yavor, what I meant about Sokolov is that he played 5 or 6 monster matches before the semifinals, which is too much even for powerful player like him. If you score so many points, you will burn out in the later stages of the competition, both by tiredness, physical and mental, and from being analyzed too well by the opponent's tacticians. Since Bulgaria and Italy had very different paths to the semifinal, they didn't play in equal condition and our lack of second scoring machine and Bratoev's inexperience cause logical result.

  • Yavor, what I meant about Sokolov is that he played 5 or 6 monster matches before the semifinals, which is too much even for powerful player like him. If you score so many points, you will burn out in the later stages of the competition, both by tiredness, physical and mental, and from being analyzed too well by the opponent's tacticians. Since Bulgaria and Italy had very different paths to the semifinal, they didn't play in equal condition and our lack of second scoring machine and Bratoev's inexperience cause logical result.


    True, but he had two almost full days of rest after the playoff games. Had he shown 75% of what he did prior to Copenhagen, Bulgaria would've taken a medal. And might've even made it to the final. Yes, the Bulgarian team has a lot of weaknesses, this is why we need a consistent Sokolov to compensate. I can't agree about the statisticians' analysis because when Sokolov has a day they won't be able to change much. He failed because he was not good enough in Copenhagen, not because they studied him so well. Vettori also scored 29 points against Bulgaria in the WL bronze medal game and was no longer unknown to our staff, but how did that affect his performance against us in the semis? I am not really criticizing Sokolov, I just wish he was more consistent. He has time, though, but I hope he uses that time well.