It was 4 years ago that Slovenia stunned all of us involved with volleyball in the country, and in all of Europe for that matter, as well. Our men’s national team made it all the way to the final in Bulgaria, facing France in that final. At the time, no one really believed Slovenia could make it that far into the tournament, let alone play in the final. All of us were really happy with the silver medal, the French were too tough of an opponent, so the result wasn’t that big of a disappointment, but we still wanted to see Slovenia win the gold. 2 years later, the team wasn’t super successful at the tournament, but the one good thing that happened was, we found out that Slovenia will be among the hosts of EuroVolley 2019, along with France, the Netherlands and Belgium.
After seeing the draw, which teams will be in the group with Slovenia, I thought it wasn’t going to be too difficult to progress into the next round of the tournament. Slovenia was drawn into group C with Belarus, Russia, Finland, Northern Macedonia and Turkey. With two losses, against Northern Macedonia (which was a bit of a shock) and Russia, Slovenia placed second in the group and was facing Bulgaria in the round of 16. We also knew that if Slovenia wins that game, most likely opponent in the quarterfinal will be Russia, again. And that actually happened. Our team defeated Bulgaria 3:1, with an amazing performance, so it was time to face Russia once more. Of course, they were big favourites for that game, considering the fact that they were still the defending European champions at the time, and because of how easy they’ve won the first game. Slovenia never even won a set in the games played between the two teams before this quarterfinal, but with the arena full of loud Slovenian supporters behind them, not only did they win a set, they won 3 of them and that meant it was time to face the defending, and double World champions, Poland.
They were all full of themselves, and to be honest, they had every right to be. Slovenia played against them a few weeks before at the Olympic qualifying tournament and lost very convincingly, but that was played in Poland, in front of their fans. This time around, they were in for a big surprise. The last of the remaining tickets for that semifinal were sold out in 1 minute and 58 seconds! People were going crazy about volleyball, which is great, but I’ll share my opinion on that a little further down in the post. The fans at the arena were going wild even before the game itself, but when it started, it seemed like they helped the players through the hardest times, and in the end our team defeated Poland, and next up was the final in Paris! The Polish players and coaching staff had a lot of excuses for their loss, none of them admitting that they were, in fact, outplayed by Slovenia in every single aspect of the game.
The whole country felt that volleyball madness, after the team progressed to the knockout stages of the tournament. As I’ve said, it was amazing to see that many people support our national team again, but as it has always been with team sports, or any kind of sport for that matter, people only follow it a team/individual is winning. Especially when it comes to volleyball. I’ve been involved in volleyball, one way or another, for about 15 years now, and I’ve heard a lot of comments from people that it’s not a “real” sport, that all you do is stand around and hit a ball every once in a while and things like that, wouldn’t want to go into some other, a bit worse comments. And yet, many of those people have been the biggest fans of the team and the sport during these days, when the wins against Bulgaria, Russia and Poland, in the end, happened. I’m not saying it’s not great for the people to come together in rooting for a national team, let it be volleyball, football, basketball, or even cycling team for that matter. What bothers me is, that people only follow a team when it’s winning, let’s just compare 2 events that happened in Slovenia for the national team this year.
The first one was in the beginning of July, when Ljubljana hosted a Challenger Cup competition, the winner of which qualified for VNL (Volleyball Nations League) for next season. Slovenia won that tournament in a very convincing manner. In the semifinal, the opponent was Belarus, the team that Slovenia also faced in their first game at EuroVolley 2 months later. The attendance at their first encounter was around 1600 people, while 2 months later, according to the official EuroVolley website, 4435 people saw the game in person. That’s a much better number, but comparing that with around 13 000 people in the semifinal of the tournament, it just proves what I said about supporting a team only when it’s winning. Someone would expect that a team, that was a runner-up at a EuroVolley 4 years ago, and being a co-host this time, would get a lot more people coming to see even the first games in person. I do have to say one thing though. Back in 2015, when the silver medal was really a big surprise and an even bigger achievement than this year, there were only a few hundred people that came to the square to show their support for the team. This time, the square was full of cheering fans!! My only hope is that in 3 months time, when Slovenia is heading to Berlin, for yet another Tokyo 2020 Olympic qualifying tournament, at least half of the people that went to the final of EuroVolley 2019 in Paris, will decide to travel to Berlin and support our national team in person, because the players deserve it!
This post wasn’t intended to be this long in the beginning, I also wanted to include what happened in Paris on the day of the final, but looks like you’re just going to have to keep an eye out for that in the upcoming days! 🙂 Let me just say that it was amazing, and you should really read what I’m going to write about it!
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