Posts by JoanaBG

Serbian volleyball federation will file an official complaint to CEV about the refereeing in Baku.
I don't think it will make a difference, though.

Quote from ossubtus

i am not opposed for athletes changing countries IF it's a real change. so aghaieva, from her name, i assume she's married to an azeri, so that's not a fake naturalization. the worse are countries like bahrain and qatar in other sports, like athletics, football, etc. they have bought dozens of foreign athletes, none of which live there or speak the language. they adopt arab names that they can't even pronounce!!!.

All naturalized Azeri players get a new surname, Mammadova and Rahimova did too. I guess it's a rule of some kind. Of course, Aghayeva in particular might be married, I don't know that.

Obmochaeva did play for Ukraine, so Russia cannot have a new naturalized player as long as she's on the team.

The limit is one naturalized player who has already played on another NT before in senior competition. You can have a team full of naturalized players if they have never represented their country of birth on international level.

Quote from serdar

The point what I opposed to was that sick perspective making correlations between religion and enthnicity Besides I don't count on what you are saying neither since most of my Bosnian friends clearly states that they have a different language than Serbian

You may not like it, I don't either, but for Bosnia it is true. The great majority of Orthodox Christians identify themselves as Serbs, as do Catholics as Croats and Muslims as Bosniaks. It's just the way it is.
There are also some (less than 5% of the population) who identify themselves as Bosnians, and those are mostly from ethnically mixed marriages.

As for the language, what was one language before 1991 (Serbo-Croatian) are now 4 languages, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. That was purely for political reasons. Mutual understanding between them is 100%.

Quote from Matthias

That's definitely necessary if Serbia doesn't want to head the same direction as Italy and Poland by relying on aging stars for too long. Serbia always gets good results on Junior level so there should be plenty of talent around!

We always seem to be stuck in some vacuum where there are lots of talented players, but still too young, and when they grow up they don't turn out quite as expected, so we wait for the next generation, and so on.
What we do need right now is a stable receiver, and that should be Jelena Blagojevic. Hope she gets selected.

Terzic said he'd bring in some new players to the team for WCh, so I'm curious to see who he has in mind.

And the situation with Antonijevic needs to be cleared, whatever it is. Zivkovic is not enough.

Quote from Canter

Serbia also couldnt have qualified depending on the result of Poland-Belgium ..

I know, that's why I cheered for Belgium to win it clearly once they took the lead, but I'm still annoyed. I'm really, REALLY displeased with the outcome of the AZE vs SRB.

I'd much rather have Poland qualify than Azerbaijan Still, never thought they'd lose 3-0 on home court, with all their star players, no less!

Azerbaijan vs Serbia was... strange. Let's put it like that.

Regarding the earlier discussion, Brankica Mihajlovic is a Serb from Bosnia.

Maja Ognjenovic's health is worse than initially thought. She has problems with kidney sand and is coming back to Belgrade tomorrow.
Could be quite problematic if something happens to Zivkovic or she has has an off day.

She had fever and stomach pains on Friday. She's feeling better now, but there was no need for her to play today. She'll probably be ready to play tomorrow.

Ivana Djerisilo is pregnant. She's due to give birth in 3 months.
So I guess this is it for her career. And I don't see her coming back to volleyball.

Well, it wasn't very short.

That's a very, very, very long (and quite painful) story. I'll try to be as short and objective as possible.

They chose Montenegro because it was better for their careers. Montengrin handball federation did a much better job, they were very well organized, ambitious and knew what they wanted, while Serbian federation was a complete mess. Moreover, Popovic played several years in Buducnost and is married to a Montenegrin, while Bulatovic's family origin is from Montenegro. So, it would be understandable that they would make such a decision. But the problem is that they weren't completely honest.

Popovic originally claimed that she would play for Serbia, but kept rejecting the calls to play on NT, until Serbia failed to qualify for WCh '07 (lost to none other than Poland in the play-offs ), when she announced that she's switching to Montenegro, even though it was a public secret at that point.

Bulatovic actually did play for Serbia in the beginning. Just before the ECh '08 play-offs she announced that she wouldn't join the team and was going to play for Montenegro in the future. At that point it was too late to select another player and Serbia was in big trouble, but they managed to qualify. I must say it left a very bitter taste in my mouth and I never saw her the same way again. It just wasn't fair play.
She never fully explained that decision. She claims that the then-Serbian coach offended her, but he denies it.

I can see their point of view. They're adored in Montenegro, true national heroes. They'd never get such attention in Serbia.
But it hurt a lot. With them (and Ana Djokic, also from Serbia but playing for Montenegro, similar story there) Serbia would have had the best team in the world. But it wasn't meant to be.

Well, it's the same in Serbia. The new world record in WCh crowd attendence was set last night with 16000 people watching the game between Serbia and Norway. I would have never imagined that so many people would show up to watch women's handball which was basically a dead sport here after many scandals and problems in the last 10 years. It's truly amazing.

Quote from joanamss

When was the last time a non european team reached semifinals in world championship?

South Korea in 2003, winning the bronze medal.
They have for years and years been by far the best non-European team, being the World champions in 1995 and Olympic winners in 1988 and 1992, also winning silver at OG '96 and '04 and bronze in '08.

Now Brazil look set to take over that role.

Amazing Poland.
Amazing Serbia.
Amazing handball.

Quote from Canter

btw...... Could Croatians or Serbians and Russians communicate with themselves without using english ? i knew the languages were close to one another but dont know how much close they are

A Tarzan-like communication, yes. Anything meaningfull, no.

Hungary definitely played their best game of the tournament against Spain. If they repeat that kind of performance against Brazil the chances are at least 50-50%. But it's very doubtful if they can keep it up.
This is an excellent opportunity for Brazil to make a big impact on the world stage and I wonder if they can handle it mentally. Hungarians have more experience in that regard. Plus, the most dangerous Brazilian shooter, Eduarda Amorim, plays in Hungary and they certainly know her very well. On the other hand, she knows the Hungarian defence and keepers too.

A very dramatic game between Serbia and Korea last night. Serbia was leading by 6 goals at some point but the Koreans managed to narrow down the gap bit by bit and equalite with just 10 seconds to go. And then Serbia scored in the very last second and went through. Crazy!

Quote from bella

I So I'll support them. They just crashed Paraguay 40:6 Well, nothing to be very excited, looking for the result I guess Paraguay is not the strongest. So I'm waiting for stronger rival to see what our girls are capable of

In "volleyball terms" Paraguay is Algeria, if not even worse. I've always argued that 4 WCh sports for America is way too many, the only team other than Brazil with a remotely acceptable level for a major competition is Argentina, and even that is questionable.
But Poland certainly has a very promising team and their matches against Spain and Norway can be exciting. And don't even count Angola out, they have an interesting team and can be quite unpredictable!

Why is Molnar playing so well all of a sudden?