24-Nov, start time: 15:00, end time: 16:10 - Attendance: 6,200

SCG	3	25	25	25	-	-	75
VEN	0	23	22	18	-	-	63

Match Description:

Seven Wins for Serbia and Montenegro
Unbeaten Serbia and Montenegro made it a sweet seven victories at the World Cup when they resisted an aggressive onslaught from Venezuela to secure a 3-0 win at Site A in Fukuoka.

The Olympic champions had to work hard for their 25-23, 25-22, 25-18 victory, while Venezuela's experience and composure on the crucial points again let them down as they fell to their fifth defeat.

There was nothing subtle about the opening, as two teams blessed with power slugged it out for an edge. First Serbia and Montenegro took a two-point lead, only for the Venezuela to fight back for their own two-point advantage.

The turning point came when the Blue Boys were trailing 13-15. Ivan Milijkovic began to dominate from the flanks and Venezuela made a couple of errors as they lost five straight points to go 18-15 down. But the hitting of Thomas Ereu and captain Ernardo Gomez kept Venezuela alive and they fought back to 23-23, only for a Goran Vujevic spike and another error to hand the first set to the Balkan side.

The Europeans carried their momentum into the second and quickly opened a 9-5 lead, a spike and drop shot from Vladimir Grbic helping them on their way. Venezuela fought back to 15-15 thanks to some good work by Ivan Marquez off the quick setting of Rodman Valera, and they stayed in touch until 21-21 when three more errors and a spike from Milijkovic cost them the second set.

At 17-9 down in the third Venezuela looked dead and buried. But a powerful series of Gomez serves inspired a mini come-back only for Serbia and Montenegro to weather the storm and claim their seventh win.

Comments:

TRAVICA Ljubomir (SCG Head Coach)
" It was a very good game for us. We concentrated very well throughout the game. We wanted to go back to Tokyo with a clean slate, so I believe today's win brought us one step closer to our goal."

MILJKOVIC Ivan (SCG Player)
" I think we played against a very strong team today. They've played very well so far, but mainly because our serves, defense and digging were very good, we didn't let them play their own game. We won this game 3 to 0 and I think this victory gave us a big chance to go to the Olympics."

CAMBERO Miguel (VEN Head Coach)
" Unable to get into our rhythm, we were forced to put up a hard battle against the world's number two ranked team, SCG. We're are still at a learning stage, and the most important thing for us is to gain experience in such a big international tournament. We need to get back into our rhythm and concentrate in the next match against the USA tomorrow."

GOMEZ Ernardo (VEN Captain)
" Today I think we played well, but our lack of experience was the reason for our loss, which was revealed in the third set, in particular."

Official Result:

Match statistics (P-2) - PDF