Volleyball World Cup: First defeat – Germany loses to Serbia

The German volleyball players suffered their first defeat at the World Championships in the Netherlands and Poland. The DVV selection lost against the defending champions from Serbia on Thursday (09/29/22) in Lodz, Poland, in 0:3 sets (23:25, 22:25, 23:25).

The team of national coach Vital Heynen presented itself in the Atlas Arena as a strong fight and offered the favored Serbian team a standoff throughout the season.

“It was close. I think we played well. Serbia are a great team with a lot of good players,” said Heynen, who was the men’s coach at the German Volleyball Association (DVV) from 2012 to 2016 and is in charge of a women’s team for the first time: “It was our best game so far but we ended up losing 3-0.”

Serbia stronger in crunch time

The DVV butterflies got off to a great start and took the lead. At the end of the first set, however, the opponent trained by the Italian Daniele Santarelli showed his greater quality in the key positions. A similar picture emerged in the second set: Germany held their own for a long time, but with three points in a row Serbia took a 2-0 lead in the end.

This was a blow to the neck for the German team, who quickly fell 3-0 down in the third set. But diagonal attacker Kimberly Drewniok provided hope and the interim 21:21. But again the Olympic bronze medalists from Serbia were stronger with the outstanding Tijana Bošković in crunch time.

Now the Olympic champions of the USA are waiting

The top scorer of the German team was Hanna Orthmann with 14 points. The DVV selection won the first two games against Bulgaria (3:1) and Kazakhstan (3:0).

In Group C of six, the DVV team meets Olympic champions USA (Friday) and Canada (Saturday). The first four teams make it into the second group phase. The German women have never won a World Championship medal before.