2015 European Championships - Netherlands and Belgium

  • An Italian magician transformed a hopeless team into an oiled machine with much power....within 4 months....


    Thank you, Giovanni :flower: :flower: :flower: :obey: :obey: :obey:



    SLoetjes :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy: :super: :super: :super:

  • good news for Galatasaray..Leys reception and serves are good...she and Güldeniz can be good defenders for galatasaray

    Indeed. Galatasaray will probably attack with only middles this year and make 5 aces per set with Leys, Guldeniz, Gamze trio :lol:

  • Why doesn't NED use the middles more often? Only 7 balls in the entire match...

  • Congrats to dutch girls, nothing else to say...they played so well tonight defending a lot and attacking even better. On our side nothing really worked...

  • Croatia-Italy. This will be interesting match ;)

  • and thanks to this game Croatia almost found on 2nd place, almost because:
    - Belarus 5 (2-1) 6-5 1.200 230-241 0.9544
    - Croatia 5 (2-1) 6-5 1.200 239-253 0.9447


    3 points less for Russia and Croatia would have played with Poland in Play-Offs :wavy:


    draw looks this:


    Netherlands - Belarus/Poland
    Turkey - Germany/Belgium
    Russia - Italy/Croatia
    Serbia - Belgium/Czech Republic

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

  • Oh, please don't start again. At least until Cro match vs Italy. Russia had 1st place anyway so what did they fight for? Now we are starting again and on Wednesday it's gonna be ' ehh what hapeened'?

  • I can't believe that some of you still don't think that Crpatia can make some big.
    7UP When will Poland beat Russia, never and Croatia didi!

  • I can't believe that some of you still don't think that Crpatia can make some big.
    7UP When will beat Russia, never and Croatia didi!


    They definitely do more and big things ! They just have to play like this, like a really team with this confidence and this incredible energy :)

  • Great game by Naz :obey: Her setting was flawless, and she made 5 blocks :win:


    Neriman has finally showed her explosive attacks, she was not smiling in previous matches but today she performed as she is capable of.


    Gizem is not my favourite libero as I have criticized her many times but during 3 group matches her reception was pretty good which is unusual and she showed some great actions at digging too. :thumbup:


    Eda-Naz harmony is not there yet due to Eda's absence in NT for last 3 years. If Eda would start to attack as she used to do, Turkey's game will reach to another level.


    Polen is playing horrible recently. Gözde Yılmaz should be starter instead of her. Polen is only a good sub, not a reliable starter. :down:


    I am quite happy with Turkey's performance, Germany won't be a problem on the way to semis. But still, to reach a medal they should reach a better shape as whole team.


    For Belgium, they missed Helene a lot today. When their MBs couldn't score enough, van Hecke can't save her team. Belgium desperately needs an offensive OH. They will most probably reach to quarterfinals but no chance against Serbia. :whistle:


    Belarus and Hungary are the surprises of the tournament. Hungary is a good serving team, Sandor and Horvath are the only good individuals but they are good example of that volleyball is a team sport not a collection of good individuals such as Bulgaria and Azerbeijan. Bulgaria has always been a promising team but never reached good results due to bad coaching and bad setters. I wonder how would perform under the guidance of Guidetti :whistle:


    Azerbeijan has showed great performance at home soil during European Games but with this disappointing performance, they don't give good signals for next ECh. Maybe they would use some of the naturalized Cuban players.

  • There is no other way to put it, just a very impressive win for Turkey. Just powered by Belgium, they had no answers.


    Few notes, I can't help feeling Polen is the weak link for Turkey, having said that her service vs Bel was surprisingly excellent today, they had problems everytime she was on serve, but i fear against the top teams she will get exposed with her attacking. I had keep her on for her serve though, hope she keeps it up, I think we got very good depth, Gozde Yilmaz is an excellent stand by. If it were me i had start her probably, lucky for Turkey i am not the coach.


    I am a huge fan of Neriman now officially, she has improved so much past 2 or 3 years, with her consistency especially, she was sort of ok/anonymous first 2 games, but she stepped up in the important game when you need your important players to step up.


    Kubra, I am now convinced with her, most notable improvement is her spiking, you feel she is money when is used through the middle or running the cross court spikes, and to think only a year ago i used to cringe when ever she went on a spike, she has improved like the young player she was should have. Clearly she has worked hard and focused, shame same can't be said of Meliha and a couple of others. In fact i am pretty sure Meliha has regressed in the 1 or 2 years she has been around the A team, glad to see she is not getting any court time.


    I realise it's only a group game and Belgium is not a top tier team, still very good win. But I won't over play the win, and keep perspective, will wait to see if we make the semis, Germany probably in QFs, and maybe playing Netherlands likely in the SFs, similar situation to Bel except i think Neth is a step up from Belgium and better home support. Who knows. It is doable to get to the final even, but you gotta do it(if you know what i mean), I won't get too high though, been disappointed too many times.


    I'll say though it is remarkable we haven't medalled more in EC, considering only12/16 teams participate and usually only 2 or 3 or maybe 4 teams ahead of us in any given comp, you think just by fluke, chance, a lucky schedule, we had end up in a semi final or 2 more than we have.

  • Not much of a surprise. Unfortunately I couldn't watch the weekend matches, but the results spoke for themselves: we found a way to give up a set to Slovenia...
    The Dutch "big hitters" have good skills and court awareness, whereas the Italian "skill" players had a weak day hitting, besides displaying very average skills. To make matters worse, I've never counted so many missed/shanked plays on our defense as today.
    Bonitta continuously refused to make the obvious adjustment and chose the difficult way instead (inversion in 1st set? strange/late substitutions?). The players didn't help him either, as they would constantly ignore his time-out suggestions.
    Give credit where credit is due; the Netherlands are back where they belong.
    Italy should regroup and turn back to its historical identity: play defense hard, keep hitting off the block, set to the middles all along the net. Even if it means using Diouf in a limited role. But first, De Gennaro, Lucia and Del Core will have to improve their receiving %, I'm confident they will.
    On a side note, ajde Hrvatska
    edit
    mmm... this one can be misunderstood. So, much love to Croatia unless the next match is Italy - Croatia.

  • I can't believe that some of you still don't think that Crpatia can make some big.
    7UP When will Poland beat Russia, never and Croatia didi!

    I think that some users can intentionally write these things about CRO to make you angry. :P And you partially deserved for this because of your kind of disrespectful comments about others teams. :teach: For example you very often try to express that Poland is too weak to fight with top teams. Even after silver medal in Baku your congratulations for Poland were rather specific. :) It can be irritating for some users. Especially that there are so many Polish users on this forum ;)


    You represent your country even on this forum. So don't be surprised that people don't want to cheer for Croatia. :drink:

  • I am quite happy with Turkey's performance, Germany won't be a problem on the way to semis. But still, to reach a medal they should reach a better shape as whole team.

    I don't understand this observation, they look fine to me, the only thing i have seen fitness wise if anything is Gozde Sonsirma looking ripping fit, and they are getting fitter game by game.

  • Actually before ECH I was expecting a medal from Turkey. To be more precise, I was thinking of Serbia - Turkey final with high possibility.
    But nobody can underestimate Guidetti factor in Netherlands, things he couldn't do with German team are now perfectly doable with the Netherlands team.