Tainara and Boskovic on fire as Club World Champs semifinalists emerge

A day before the end of the pool stage at the 2023 FIVB Volleyball Women’s Club World Championship, the four semifinalists emerged. Vietnam’s Sport Center I Women's Club of Hanoi and Brazil’s Gerdau Minas of Belo Horizonte suffered their second defeats in Hangzhou on Thursday and completed their campaigns at the tournament without a win. The remaining four teams – China’s Tianjin Bohai Bank, Türkiye’s Eczacibasi Dynavit Istanbul, Brazil’s Dentil Praia Clube of Uberlandia and Türkiye’s VakifBank Spor Kulubu of Istanbul – are now all qualified for Saturday’s semifinals and will play on Friday’s last day of the pool stage for better positions in the bracket.

• Watch the 2023 FIVB Volleyball Women’s Club World Championship live on  VBTV

Pool A

Two-time club world champions Eczacibasi Dynavit Istanbul left no doubts over their superiority in the match against Gerdau Minas and cruised to an emphatic victory in their first game of the Club World Championship in China. This way, the Turkish side qualified for the semifinals for the seventh time in the history of the competition, also pushing hosts Tianjin Bohai Bank forward to the last four for the first time in the Chinese club’s three appearances.

Eczacibasi hammered out as many as eight aces towards their success, against none for Gerdau Minas. The attack also made e huge difference in the match, bringing in 43 points to the winners and only 24 to the team from Belo Horizonte. Only on very few occasions early into the sets, the Brazilian squad managed to take a small lead in the score, while Eczacibasi prevailed at the end by a solid margin, with setter Elif Sahin finishing off the match with two aces in a row. The team’s Serbian opposite and captain Tijana Boskovic topped the scorers’ chart of the match with 17 points, including, two aces. Russian outside Irina Voronkova impressed with four aces and two kill blocks towards a 13-point tally, while none of Gerdau’s players managed to get close to the double digits.

In the deciding battle for the first place in the final Pool A standings, Tianjin will take on Eczacibasi on Friday at 19:30 local time (11:30 UTC).

Pool B

In their first match in Hangzhou, Dentil Praia Clube achieved a straight-set victory over Sport Center I Women's Club, outplaying the opponents from the serving line (8-0 in aces) and in offence (52-31 in attack kills), while both sides managed to raise six kill blocks each during the match. With this result, the squad from Uberlandia secured a spot among the semifinalists for only the second time in history, and at least matched their previous best result in the competition, a fourth place in 2018, staying on track for their first podium.

Dentil Praia were well in control of the first set, but then committed far too many unforced errors to help Sport Center I dominate the first half of the second, before the Brazilians could turn things around and double their lead. The third set was the most competitive one of the three. On a few occasions, the Vietnamese team managed to open e lead as wide as five points before Dentil Praia caught up. The Brazilians denied the first opponent set point to push the set into overtime. Then, Sport Center I denied the first match point of the game, but on the second, Bulgarian outside hitter Dobriana Rabadzhieva brought in the victory.

Dentil Praia’s opposite Tainara Santos hammered out a 24-point match high, including two aces, while Russian outside Sofya Kuznetsova added another 12 points for the winners, including two blocks and an ace. Thi Nhu Quynh Vi with 14 points and Tu Linh Tran with 11 were Sport Center I’s leading scorers.

On Friday, at 14:00 local time (06:00 UTC), Dentil Praia will challenge four-time club world champions VakifBank Spor Kulubu in a direct duel for the first place in the final Pool B standings.

2023 FIVB Volleyball Women’s Club World Championship: schedule and results

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