Men’s Teams Event European Games 2019 Minsk
Seeded at the last position Denmark upset the packing order beat Slovenia and booked the place in the quarterfinal of the Men’s Team’s Event at the European Games 2019 in Minsk. Romania Portugal and Croatia joined them.
Tobias RASMUSSEN and Anders LIND lost their doubles match against Darko JORGIC and Deni KOZUL but Jonathan GROTH leveled the match by beating Bojan TOKIC. LIND prevailed against JORGIC whilst TOKIC overcame RASMUSSEN. In decisive match GROTH accounted for KOZUL.
“It is great that we win here and reached quarterfinal. No one expected that. Our team is very young and we faced much better ranked Slovenia ” said GROTH.
Portugal overcame France 3:1 with Marcos FREITAS being backbone of team’s success. He overcame Simon GAUZY and Can AKUZZU. Tiago APOLONIA and Joao MONTEIRO beat CAN and LEBESSON I the doubles at the start of the match.
“We were two games down against them but we recovered. It was important that we gave good start for singles. Generally Portugal was much stronger today as a team ” said APOLONIA.
Marcos also praised Tiago’s and Joao’s effort.
“It makes great difference when you start after the lead ” said FRAITAS. “Speaking of duel against GAZY I think I had a better focus today. Both players know me very well it was very difficult to0 play against them.”
Romania also created upset by beating host nations favorites. Ovidiu IONESCU won both his encounters against Vladimir SAMSONOV and Aliaksandr KHANIN. Cristian PLETEA and Hunor SZOCS opened the match with the victory over Aliaksandr KHANIN and Pavel PLATONOV.
Croatia prevailed against Belgium 3-1. Tomislav PUCAR lost against Cedric NUYTINCK and beat Robin DEVOS. Andrej GACINA prevailed against Florent LAMBIET. KOJIC and GACINA beat DEVOS and LAMBIET in doubles.
