Volleyball – The Berlin Volleys and the pressure thing

It could have been the first tricky moment of the season for the Berlin Volleys. Last Wednesday, the volleyball players lost a game in the Champions League against Warsaw for the first time this season – and in three sets. Just three days later, the top Bundesliga game against SVG Lüneburg took place. But in the duel between first and second, the league leaders from Berlin showed a strong reaction to their first defeat of the season on Saturday evening.

After less than 90 minutes, the Volleys had swept their closest rival in the league off the board with 25:18, 25:18 and 25:20. Even a foot injury to middle blocker Matthew Knigge early in the first set didn’t bother the record champions. Instead, Florian Krage, who came on for Knigge, became the best man of the game with ten points and many good defensive actions.

The young team from Lüneburg was only able to keep up in all three sets at the beginning in front of 4,936 spectators in the atmospheric Max Schmeling Hall. Whenever the volleys increased the number of hits from the middle of the round onwards, a comfortable lead arose, which was then never relinquished. For Berlin’s captain Ruben Schott it was the right answer to the defeat in the premier class: “The mentality was right, but I think that’s normal after a game like the one in Warsaw. That was our first defeat and you just want to get back on the field straight away and show what you can do. I think we did that today.”

But the truth is that the second-place team was hardly able to put pressure on the volleys. SVG gave the Berliners 19 points through service errors alone. This time, the Lower Saxony team did not come close to their best form from two weeks ago, when the Lüneburg team narrowly lost 3-1 in the quarter-finals of the DVV Cup in Berlin. Ruben Schott also admitted after the end of the game on Saturday: “Overall, we played it down in a very mature way. But of course it’s easier if you’re leading by three or four points in the set. Then you can play more freely.«

This has been the norm for volleys in the Bundesliga so far. After winning the top game, the record champions have eleven wins from eleven games. The Volleys have only had to give up a set twice and have never had to lose a decisive fifth set in the league. They are therefore already six points ahead of the new second-placed Friedrichshafen.

At the top European level in the Champions League, however, a different picture emerges. Even in the opening match against Ljubljana, the Berliners had to stretch hard for the important home win. After Wednesday’s defeat against Warsaw, coach Joel Banks also spoke about the different levels of performance that the top team from Warsaw is confronted with in the domestic league: “They are simply used to this level from the PlusLiga and can maintain it even longer than we can . We don’t always face these pressures. That’s not an excuse, but it’s the reality.”

For the British coach of the Berliners, who previously worked in the Polish PlusLiga, there is a crucial difference here compared to the Bundesliga. After the comfortable win against Lüneburg, the 49-year-old explained to “nd” that the top teams in Poland are under pressure much more often: “That means that teams like Warsaw often have situations where the score is 20:20 or 22:22, and they have to learn how to deal with these situations, which decisions they then make, which move they choose. They are confronted with this situation much more often in the PlusLiga than we are.”

The volleys therefore have to work out the last percent of competition differently, demands Banks: “With all respect for our opponents: But we are currently dominating the Bundesliga. That’s why for us it’s all about standards. We talk a lot about how we want to train, play and perform because we can control that ourselves. The confident victory in the top game against Lüneburg should absolutely meet this standard, even if the Berliners’ resistance to pressure was hardly tested. They have to get the volleys elsewhere, because the decisive duels in the Champions League group phase in Ljubljana and at home against Warsaw await in January. At that point at the latest, the pressure on the Berlin volleyball players will become significantly greater again.

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