Spanish Pablo Herrera and Adrian Gavira are considered by many one of the toughest beach volleyball teams in the world, but Evandro Goncalves and Bruno Schmidt didn’t make it look like that, as the Brazilians posted a sound 21-11, 21-16 victory to top Pool I at the 2019 World Championships.
Evandro, a 2017 world champion, and Bruno, who won the tournament in 2015, dominated both the net, with five blocks, and the service line, with six aces, to keep the Spanish under control in one of their rare unimpressive performances in the last years.
“I think it was one of the best matches we ever played together, but the Spanish also weren’t on their best day,” Evandro said. “We found a good strategy to neutralize Herrera, we both served pretty well, I got a few some blocks and Bruno had some digs and that made things easier for us. It was a good pool round for us, but we need to keep growing in the tournament now that elimination begins.”
Playing together just since February, the Brazilians are pleased by their positive start in Hamburg, but they are very aware that the most important part of the tournament is yet to come.
“It was a long pool stage, but I think we handled it very well,” Bruno added. “It was important that we won our matches because this phase shapes the rest of the tournament and I think we did the best we could. But now a new tournament starts with the elimination round, we can’t afford losing any matches and we need to be ready.”
The third spot of the pool went to Australians Damien Schumann and Cole Durant, who downed Venezuela’s Charly Rangel and Tigrito Gomez 21-10, 21-19.
Swiss on top on Pool K
Adrian Heidrich and Mirco Gerson came out on top of the highly-competitive Pool K as the Swiss were on the right side of a triple tie with Latvians Aleksandrs Samoilovos and Janis Smendins and Canadians Sam Pedlow and Sam Schachter, who also advanced to the elimination round.
The final match day of the pool had the Swiss downing Chileans Ignacio Zavala and Gaspar Lammel, who are now eliminated, 21-16, 21-11, and the Canadians topping the Latvians 21-19, 24-22.
