Women's World Championship 2025

Champions dethroned! Netherlands on to World Championship quarterfinals

The Dutch will meet Japan or Thailand on Wednesday

Published 01:18, 29 Aug 2025

Netherlands (NED) vs. Serbia (SRB) women - Round of 16 #57103936

The Netherlands booked the first quarterfinal spot at the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship in Thailand. In Friday’s first eighthfinal match in Bangkok, they upset Serbia in a rollercoaster five-set battle and dethroned the world champions of the previous two editions. The Netherlands’ quarterfinal opponent will be known later on Friday and it will be the winner of the second eighthfinal match between Japan and Thailand, serving off at 20:30 local time (13:30 UTC).

Watch the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Women's World Championship on VBTV

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Without their injured star opposite Tijana Boskovic, World Championship Most Valuable Player in both 2018 and 2022, Serbia managed to come back from two sets down and pushed the match to five sets, but the tie-breaker was the only set, in which the Netherlands clearly dominated, in the build-up to that Nika Daalderop spike that touched the finger of Serbian rising star middle blocker Hena Kurtagic on the way out and fixed the final score at 3-2 (27-25, 26-24, 22-25, 20-25, 15-11) to get the Dutch victory party started.

In the first four sets, the two teams put up an even battle on the court, with plenty of changes in the lead in each of these sets. Both set one and set two were extended to overtime resolutions before the western Europeans could take a 2-0 lead. With 20-year-old outside hitter Vanja Ivanovic and her 21-year-old cross-court teammate Aleksandra Uzelac on fire in attack in sets three and four, respectively, the southern Europeans battled back to level up, but that was only as far as they could get.

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Serbia, in fact, outperformed the Netherlands in each of the scoring elements (72-63 in spike kills, 7-3 in serving aces and 13-12 in kill blocks), but committed far too many unforced errors, 32 against only 18 from the opponents. Outside and captain Daalderop led the Dutch with 19 points, including the match winner. Her tally featured one ace and one kill block. 22-year-old opposite Elles Dambrink added another 17 points. The other outside Marrit Jasper, 22-year-old middle Britte Stuut (four kill blocks) and her cross-court teammate Eline Timmerman also reached the double digits with 13, 11 and 10 points, respectively.

“I cannot believe it! I feel really happy!” Jasper exclaimed in her VBTV interview. “I feel really proud of the team. I think everybody was fighting a lot. The first two sets were really close and after that we dropped down a little bit, but we fought back at the right moment. A quarterfinal was our first goal and now we go on to the next goal.”

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On the Serbian side, Uzelac fired a fantastic 31 points to emerge as the best scorer of the match. With three aces to her name, she was also the best server of the match, jointly with opposite Vanja Bukilic, who finished with a total of 14 points. Ivanovic put away as many as 24 points, all in swings, while middle Maja Aleksic impressed with six kill blocks towards a total tally of 13 points.

“It is very disappointing that we lost. We made a comeback from 2-0 to 2-2 and, when you make such a comeback, you expect to win. So, this is going to hurt for a while and, hopefully, we remember this pain for the next years and learn from it,” commented Bukilic. “This season we grew together as a team and I think we are just going to grow more and more each year.”