Timothée Carle (r.) found the gaps in the Lüneburg block best.
Photo: imago/Behrendt
When it comes to motivation, there is a big difference between “one more time” and “one last time.” Volleyball player Timothée Carle is enjoying this in the playoffs. The Frenchman has been playing for the German champions in Berlin for four years, but now it is clear: this will be his last season in the Volleys’ service. He has already won the title with them three times. Starting next season, the hunt will probably continue in the stronger Polish league. But Carle only has one thing in mind for the coming month: one last adventure with his old friends.
This also includes the 5,483 Berlin fans who came to the Max-Schmeling-Halle for the first of a maximum of five Bundesliga semi-final games against SVG Lüneburg. “I’ll miss them,” said Carle after leading his team to a 3-1 opening win on Wednesday evening. Only a few other arenas in Europe regularly attract more than 4,000 spectators and make such a noise. Now the outside attacker seemed to want to show them once again what they will miss in the future.
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The first two sets were evenly matched and were won each time by the team that had initially been behind: first the Berlin team turned number one to 27:25, then the Lüneburg team turned the second round to the opposite result. And by now it was clear to everyone that this series would not be a walk in the park for the record champions. Speaking of which, there was another motivating element for Carle and his colleagues: the Berliners still have to share the title of record champions with VfB Friedrichshafen, who had lost their first semi-final 2-3 in Giesen the day before. »That pushes us all. We want to be the sole champion,” Carle told “nd”.
At the end of the third set he took over the role of leader. If setter Johannes Tille is usually looking for Marek Šotola’s cracking left hand or captain Ruben Schott’s cleverness, this time he was forced to make option three number one, as the other two had failed too often due to Lüneburg’s block.
And Carle delivered. Sometimes he hit the opposing block’s hands hard, sometimes he put the ball over the top as soft as butter. He found the perfect solution every time. After his ace to make it 25:21 in the long-fought third set, this was the final sign of who the key player would be that evening. Carle gave shaky Berliners the necessary stability and even sank every attack from the backcourt in the fourth set. He was then deservedly voted best man of the game.
“That’s the difference,” Lüneburg’s counterpart Erik Röhrs later had to admit. »Berlin plays a game like this at a high level. We had a chance today, but then we end up making more mistakes that don’t happen in Berlin.” Röhrs is only 22. The highly talented national player lacks international experience, as does his entire team, which is hardly older on average. The Volleys have been one of the best eight teams in the Champions League for years and know how to sharpen their focus in important phases. The Lüneburgers have only been playing in the European Cup for three years and were able to get a taste of the premier class for the first time this season.
Because they failed there early on, they were able to continue playing in the second-class CEV Cup and sensationally advance to the final. They clearly lost against the top Polish team Resovia Rzeszów. And even against the Berliners, Lüneburg didn’t know how to set the tone in tight moments. “But you can see that we are close,” said Röhrs, a native of Brandenburg who went to school in Berlin for eight years. And who knows: a few tactical changes – and maybe we could “annoy the series winners a little more” at the home game on Saturday.
Röhrs has only been playing for the Lüneburg talent factory since last autumn, after he sensationally qualified for the Olympics with the German national team. Since his development has continued to improve since then and financially more powerful clubs are now knocking, he will be leaving the club again this summer. “It will be impossible to keep Erik,” sports director Bernd Schlesinger recently told the “Hamburger Morgenpost”. If Röhrs doesn’t move abroad, but rather back home, there would soon be a place available on the volleys for an outside attacker.
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