Serbia Volleyball Grinds Past Estonia 3-1 in Tampere
Serbia opened the European Championship with a 3-1 win over Estonia in Tampere, but the scoreline hides how hard the match actually was. Host Finland is up next on Sunday, a far tougher test.
Estonia held three set points in the second set, and Serbia’s bench had gone quiet. Then the Eagles reeled off five straight points, snatched the set away, and, though nobody in the Tampere stands could have known it at the time, set the tone for the entire match. It was never an easy night.
Serbia won 3-1 in the end, by set scores of 25-23, 26-24, 26-28 and 25-22, picking up its first three points of the European Championship. But the scoreboard does not tell the full story of how much coach Krecu’s team struggled against a rival that was, on paper, a clear underdog in the group.
Serbia closed out the first set without much trouble, 25-23. The second brought the comeback already described, a rescue from three set points and a point-by-point climb to a 26-24 finish. The third set should have been a formality, but that was where Estonia played its best volleyball of the night. Serbia clawed back a deficit that had reached four points and got within touching distance, only to fall just short and lose the set 26-28. The fourth set carried the same tension all the way to 10-10, when Serbia again showed what makes this team dangerous, a run of five straight points that finally exposed the gap in quality and sent the match toward the finish everyone had expected from the start, 25-22.
Opposite hitter Drazen Luburic was Serbia’s top scorer with 20 points, a total he posted despite not returning to the court after coming off late in the third set. Lazar Marinovic added 16 points and Pavle Peric 15. The trio carried most of the attacking load while the rest of the rotation did the dirty work in defense and at the block.
This was Serbia’s tournament opener after a build-up that left the team without a real dress rehearsal: a match against Bulgaria was called off due to a virus outbreak in that squad, and two odd draws with Slovenia were both stopped at 2-2. Form was always going to have to come together during the tournament itself, and the first half of the Estonia match showed exactly that, a team building its rhythm as it went.
Group C is being played in Tampere and also features Finland, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium alongside Serbia and Estonia. The top four teams advance to the knockout stage, which leaves little room for error, though not none. After the opening round, host nation Finland tops the group after beating Denmark without dropping a set, while Serbia and Belgium, who also won 3-1 against the Netherlands, are level on results.
Serbia sits sixth in the CEV rankings and is counted among the six main favorites for this European Championship, which is being co-hosted by Bulgaria, Finland, Italy and Romania. The tournament opened on September 9 with 24 teams, and the final is scheduled for September 26. Of the squad that won Serbia’s last title in 2019, only three players remain: Luburic, Nikola Jovovic and Marko Ivovic, a fair indicator of how much the roster has turned over since.
The next test is far tougher than Estonia. On Sunday, September 13 at 5 p.m., Serbia faces host nation Finland, the only team in the group still without a dropped set after the first round. The Netherlands follow on Monday, September 14 at 4 p.m., then Denmark on September 16 and Belgium on September 17, both also at 4 p.m.
A win over Estonia counts the same as any other, three points are three points. But if Serbia wants a knockout-stage spot without nerves in the final round, it will need to look considerably more convincing against Finland on Sunday than it did tonight.
