Rwandan players go for a block against an Egyptian player in Thursday night’s quarter final match in Cairo
Rwanda men’s volleyball team’s hopes of securing a semifinal berth at the CAVB Men’s African Volleyball Championship went up in smoke after losing by straight sets to hosts Egypt in the quarter final played on Thursday night at the Cairo Stadium Complex.
Rwanda missed out a place in the last four losing to Egypt 0-3 (14-25, 18-25, and 14-25).
The Egyptian team started the match with the full power and succeeded to dominate the first set through the services of Ahmed Salah and Abdalla Abdelsalam.
In the second set, Rwanda started better through the spikes of Yves Mutabazi and the solid block they deployed to lead several times before Egypt again recovered to win the difficult set.
In the third set, the Egyptian coach Marcos Miranda changed most of the standing players but however, they continued to the same rhythm to win 25-14 and the match in straight sets.
Egypt qualified for the semifinal to combat Cameroon on Friday, while Rwanda will take on Libya for the 5 to 8 positions.
In other quarter final matches played on Thursday, Cameroon needed 123 minutes to set a five set victory over fighting Libya (27-25, 22-25, 25-21, 23-25, 15-9) to clinch the third semifinal ticket after Tunisia and Algeria.
Tunisia captured the second semifinal ticket after they took on Morocco 3-0 (25-21, 25-17, 25-22) while Algeria recorded straight sets victory (25-19, 25-13, 25-19) over RD Congo.
The semifinal winners will book their tickets to Italy/Bulgaria, while the losers will play for the final berth in the 3rd place match.
This tournament is also acting as the final round of qualifying for the Confederation of African Volleyball (CAVB) for the 2018 FIVB Men’s World Championship to be held in Italy and Bulgaria. The top three finishers will be the African representatives at the World Championships.
