Cherif Younousse of Qatar shoots to score against the Russian Olympic Committee team as Oleg Stoyanovskiy tries to block his effort during their semi-final match played in Tokyo, yesterday.
Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan suffered a straight set defeat at the hands of the Russian Olympic
Committee’s Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy in the semi-finals of Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games yesterday.
The first set of the semi-final duel between the teams of Qatar and the ROC was really tight. Cherif and Ahmed managed to recover from a three-point deficit and work out a two-point lead of their own, but, in the meantime,
Krasilnikov and Stoyanovskiy stayed more focused to grab a narrow edge.
After 11-11 in the second set, the Europeans took the lead for good. They kept the pressure on to increase the gap until Stoyanovskiy closed it off at 2-0 (21-19, 21-17) with a monster block.
In the other semi-finals match, Anders Mol and Christian Sorum of Norway defeated Latvia’s Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs 2-0 (21-15, 21-16).
The Qatari duo will have their sight now set on the bronze medal as they will take on Plavins and Tocs in third-place match tomorrow.
The two teams have met three times so far with Cherif and Tijan having a 2-1 lead. The Qatari pair won the last match between the two teams in 2019 FIVB Gstaad Major 26-24 21-19.
