Paris (AFP)
Serbia won its third European volleyball championship title after 2001 and 2011, winning in the final against Slovenia 3 sets to 1 (19-25, 25-16, 25-18, 25-20), Sunday in Paris-Bercy.
Slobodan Kovac's men completed the undefeated tournament with nine wins, led by their sharp Aleksandar Atanasijevic. Slovenians have to settle for their second silver after 2015 and the lost final against France in Sofia.
Euro-2019's third place went to Poland, the two-time world champion (2014 and 2018), who beat France 3-0 in the bronze medal match on Saturday.
In the final, after a first set offered to the Slovenes in a full Paris-Bercy arena (12,654 spectators) and stormed by the green apple fans from Ljubljana, Nemanja Petric's teammates made just a mouthful of their opponents, closing the case in less than two hours (1:54).
Serbs and Slovenes will have to go back to battle in just over three months to try to win in Berlin the last European ticket at stake for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
From 5 to 10 January 2020, they will find the French, but also the Germans, hosts of the tournament, the Bulgarians, or the Dutch, with only one place at stake for Japan in the summer of 2020 and join Poland, Russia and Italy, the three selections of the Old Continent that validated their Tokyo ticket in early August.
© 2019 AFP