Qatar’s debutants Jefferson Santos Pereira and Cherif Younousse secured the first objective of their major mission by qualifying for the Rio Olympic Games beach volleyball elimination round with a gritty comeback triumph.
At the Copacabana Beach on Wednesday, Asian Continental Cup champions Pereira and Younousse, who began playing together only last year, defeated European Continental Cup winners Alexander Huber and Robin Seidl of Austria in three sets 18-21 21-19 15-12.
With this 57-minute victory, Pereira and Younousse finished the Pool F engagements with a 2-1 win-loss record and advanced to the last sixteen stage behind Spaniards Adrian Gavira and Pablo Gavira, who defeated Jake Gibb and Casey Patterson of the United States 2-1 (21-19, 16-21, 15-7) in 56 minutes in another match.
Qatar team coach Pedro Paulo Costa was thrilled with the superb effort of his boys.”We’re all excited with the team’s qualification for the knock-out. Reaching the Olympic Games was once impossible once and now we’re already in the ninth place… it’s really amazing.
“Yes, it was another tough match. We need to improve our concentration in the beginning. Anyways, it has brought out our nice recovery ability,” added the coach from Rio.
The Qatari players had seven service faults and still they managed to triumph.”This was another big mistake. In the first set, our players couldn’t settle down well and kept missing services. I’m sure if we had put the other team to play more, we could have won 2-0… But overall it was a memorable effort and we’ll try to fix the mistakes by analysing the numbers and doing even better in the next match.”
He also hoped that beach volleyball would draw more attraction and get priority on the Qatar Olympic Committee agenda.”I hope that beach volleyball becomes one of the priorities for our national Olympic committee because we are showing amazing potential and all of us have been doing our job with excellence.”
Talking about the big support from the local crowd, he said,”The Brazilian people have adopted us as a second national team. I’m from Rio de Janeiro and so is Jefferson. The support is getting bigger and better with each match.”
After both the pairs shared the first two sets, it was the Qatari team which began to exert the pressure on the rivals after going 4-2 up. The Austrians rallied hard in strong wind and tied the decider five times. The winners opened a crucial two-point gap (11-9) with Pereira and Younousse smashing the ball successfully.
After Huber spiked, Younousse found the gap to make it 13-10 and Qatar then had four match points as Huber made a mistake by hitting out. The Austrians continued to fight back and reduced the margin by two points (12-14). However, the Rio player Pereira sealed the victory with a superb smash to a big applause from the crowd.
The Qatari team had lost the opening match to sixth-seeded Americans Gibb and Patterson. But they bounced back with an upset victory against the pool leaders Gavira and Herrera.
Wednesday’s match was the second international meeting between the two teams as Huber and Seidl posted a three-set win over Pereira and Younousse last September at the Xiamen Open in China.
The Qatar pair, which had four 25ths and a 17th in their last five FIVB World Tour events, emerged the champions in the Kish Island Open in Iran in February.
One of the Qatar pair’s 25ths was in mid-March on Copacabana in the Rio Grand Slam when it advanced to the Main Draw with two qualifying wins before losing three-straight pool play matches to teams from Chile, Russia and the United States that are competing in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
Despite the loss, Huber and Seidl remain in contention for a berth in the elimination rounds as the Austrians finished ahead of Gibb and Patterson in the group. Both pairs ended with a 1-2 record, but the Austrians had a plus-five point margin as compared to the Americans’ minus 1. Although head-to-head meetings are not used to break a tie, Huber and Seidl had defeated the Americans 21-18, 21-18 on Monday.