Sada Cruzeiro beats Guaynabo in Club Championship

BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, May 5, 2014 – Sada Cruzeiro from Brazil took a strong first step in the road to defend the crown of FIVB Men’s Club World Championship in home soil, after a solid display over Puerto Rico’s Guaynabo Mets.

Prior to that, Argentina’s UPCN proved to be more experienced than Esperance Tunis and Al-Rayyan, with its many stars, provided a tough defeat to Italy’s Trentino.

For the local team at Mineirinho Arena, it was a matter of consistency over Guaynabo Mets. Cruzeiro earned a well-deserved 3-0 win (25-18, 25-15, 25-19) with keeping a low rate of errors and spiking hard and fast. Wallace De Souza was the best player with 13 points, taking a huge lead over all other scorers.

Earlier, the first match in Belo Horizonte featured Argentinean four-time champion UPCN and a struggling team of Esperance Tunis, which improved during the game but finally had to accept defeat against the South Americans, in three sets (25-18, 25-18, 27-25).

Olympian Theo Lopes, one of the main weapons in UPCN, was the most prolific scorer with 16 points.

Al-Rayyan, precisely, became the other Pool B winner in the second game of the day. The Asian wild card outlasted the other guest of the tournament, Italy’s Trentino, in a hard-fought battle.

Although Qatar’s team only needed three sets for the victory, it was a close contest as they prevailed with narrow scores (25-22, 26-24, 25-22).

Both main weapons from Al-Rayyan were from a historical volleyball school as Cuba: middle-blocker Robertlandy Simón and opposite player Michael Sánchez scored 39 points together, to darken Trentino’s horizon in Brazil.

Now the Italians must defeat UPCN on Wednesday to keep alive their hopes of a medal.