Argentina lost another game to Bulgaria this season. After two meetings during the competition of pool A, Bulgaria managed to beat the hosts of Final Six one more time.
The game was pretty equal in many parts. The first set was a little bit nervous and brought a lot of mistakes from Bulgaria. Argentina managed to take a lead for a while, but thanks to Sokolov, Bulagria gained back their hope for that moment. The first part was prolonged and closed with 28:26 result for Bulgaria.
The second set was a lot tighter but continued the trend of the lead swapping hands many times. Sokolov was the catalyst behind Bulgaria staying in the set while the Argentineans relied on Quiroga with supporting roles from Sebastien Sole and Pablo Crer. With both teams jostling for position Bulgaria put their noses in front at the finishing post and claimed the second set 25-23 and go 2-0 up overall.
By this stage it looked like Bulgaria, with Georgi Bratoev pulling the strings superbly, were going to run away with a straight sets victory however Quiroga and company had different ideas. They steamed to a 25-20 third set win to reduce the match deficit to 2-1 giving the 5,000 fans plenty more to sing about.
This seemed to spark Bulgaria back into life. Sokolov was unstoppable as last yearโs World League and Olympic fourth-placed team did enough to get home 25-23 consigning Argentina to their 10th consecutive defeat and improving Bulgariaโs record against Argentina to five straight wins in the World League including three straight this year.
Argentina – Bulgaria 1:3 (26:28, 23:25, 25:20, 23:25)
Press conference
Tsvetan Sokolov said: It was a difficult match for us, but we are very happy with this victory. The first set was even and it’s important to start the match by winning it. In this World League every match is hard, but we hope to play the next match at a high level.
Argentina captain Luciano De Cecco thought his team played well and had a good share of the match, but still need to improve their performance.
We had opportunities to win the game but we couldn’t, and that is an error that we have to correct. But we played well, better than previous matches. We have to see what we did wrong [before] the next game against Italy.
Coach Javier Weber agreed with his captain that the match was close, lamented some crucial lapses.
We had really good moments, but we didn’t play all the time as we had to. When we play against very good teams, like Bulgaria, we are usually close to winning but unfortunately we couldn’t make it.
source: fivb
