Serbia - Slovenia 0-3: Volleyball Euro Ends in Turin

Slovenia’s ninth point came while the Serbian bench was still searching for an answer. It was only 9-4 when head coach George Krecu, a Romanian, called a timeout to stop the bleeding. It didn’t help. Serbia dropped the first set 25-14 and the second 25-13, and even when the team finally seemed to wake up and level the third set at 19-19, Slovenia stayed composed and closed out the match 25-22.

The result was a 3-0 defeat, 25-14, 25-13, 25-22 by sets, in the round of 16 of the European Volleyball Championship, played on Monday evening in Turin. It sent Serbia out of the tournament in 13th place, the worst finish in the national team’s history at a European Championship, and marked the first time since 1995 that Serbia failed to reach the next stage of the competition. Even the match length is disputed in the details: Serbian outlets put it at around 75 minutes, while Slovenia’s RTV SLO reported 77.

Ahead of the match, this had been billed as Serbia’s last hurdle before the quarterfinals, a Monday night duel with Slovenia in Turin starting at 9 p.m. That hurdle turned out to be far more than a formality.

Slovenia’s Nik Mujanovic was the most effective player on the court with 14 points and three aces, followed by Alen Pajenk with 12 points and four blocks, then Rok Mozic with 11 and Jan Kozamernik with 10, five of them from blocks. For Serbia, Marko Ivovic led the way with eight points, Nedeljkovic added seven, Masulovic six, while captain Drazen Luburic managed only two. The numbers behind those totals show where the match was actually decided: Slovenia finished with 10 blocks and six aces, while Serbia had just four blocks against 24 unforced errors of its own. That many mistakes on serve and reception simply cannot be absorbed against an opponent at this level.

Who’s Next for Slovenia, and What About Krecu?

Slovenia will face Belgium in the quarterfinals on Wednesday at 4 p.m.; Belgium beat the Czech Republic 3-1 in their own round of 16 match. For Serbia, what follows is a reckoning with one of its worst performances at a major tournament, and the first question is whether Krecu keeps his job. The head coach himself said that decision belongs to the Volleyball Federation of Serbia, not to him.

After the match, Krecu was blunt about what went wrong:

We handed them a lot of points. We lost a lot of points on serve, a lot in reception too, so it looked like we had no answer for how to win a point. The same continued into the second set. We tried to fight our way back into the match, but we only found the right rhythm in the third set.

By his own account, the turnaround simply never arrived in time. Asked how much an exit like this hurts, the coach didn’t hide his emotions:

It’s clear that it’s frustrating when, after so many months of work, everything ends so quickly, but we can’t blame anyone, because the attitude was right off the court and during training.

He stressed that the players had given everything right up to the final training session, and that the problem was never their commitment to the work.

Captain Nikola Jovovic, the only player who came to face reporters, was just as open:

It was simply a pale performance. We unexpectedly played poorly somehow, we made a lot of mistakes in the first two sets, and at some moments it was literally unwatchable.

Slovenia, the captain added, played a smart, mature match, while Serbia played poorly. Asked about a possible generational shift and his own future in the national team shirt, he wasn’t in a hurry to answer:

I’ll wait for a calmer moment for that conversation. Thank God I’m alive and healthy, but of course the future belongs to the younger players.

Slovenia’s eighth straight win over Serbia in official matches, and a 13th place finish, say enough on their own. When the captain says the future belongs to the younger players, it sounds like the most honest preview of what’s ahead for Serbian volleyball after Turin.