Luxembourg, October 31, 2018.  Poland’s Budowlani ŁÓDŹ, Germany’s Allianz MTV STUTTGART and France’s ASPTT MULHOUSE VB cruised to straight-set home victories over Hungary’s Swietelsky BÉKÉSCSABA, Nethrelands’ SLIEDRECHT Sport and Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ZOK Bimal-Jedinstvo BRČKO, respectively, on Wednesday to advance comfortably to the third round of the 2019 CEV Volleyball Champions League - Women. The three losing teams of these second-round clashes will cross over to the 2019 CEV Volleyball Cup competition.

Allianz came out with all guns blazing and took an early 8-3 lead with Julia Schaefer serving. The home team made very few mistakes on the way to a 25-7 landslide, while SLIEDRECHT had difficulties in all aspects of the game. 

In front of 1,485 spectators at the SCHARRena, Allianz continued to dominate to gain a 7-1 advantage in the second set. Coach Ioannis Athanasopoulos started changing his starting line up to give all his players time on the court, and it paid off with another emphatic set win – 25-12. At this stage, the hosts had already secured their qualification to the next round. 

The home team’s celebration started too early and in the third set SLIEDRECHT were finally getting into rhythm and defended boldly. A nice game developed, with Jana-Franziska Poll ending the match at 25-22 with an attack from the right side.

SLIEDRECHT Sport’s Christie Wolt was the best scorer of the match with 10 points and the only one on the court to reach double digits.

After winning both matches in the series in straight sets, Allianz MTV STUTTGART advanced to the third round, where they will measure up to Romania’s 2018 #CLVolleyW silver medal winners CSM Volei Alba BLAJ for a spot in the pool stage.

Kim Renkema, Sports Director of Allianz MTV STUTTGART: “We were even more focused compared to our first match in Sliedrecht. I liked the fact that we were able to give Jana-Franziska Poll and Sarah Wilhite time on the court to expose them to our rhythm of the game. This is very important before our important match in three days – for the national cup Round of 16 against DRESDNER SC.”

Ioannis Athanasopoulos, coach of Allianz MTV STUTTGART: “Before the match I told my team to forget everything that had happened before. We started at 0-0 and had to fight for every ball. They did this very well. But I still see a lot of things that we need to improve. In the first two sets, SLIEDRECHT didn’t push us that much, so we could not test as much as I wanted.”