Hamburg, Germany, June 29, 2019 - With a changing of partnerships twice among the Brazilian teams in the past 13 months, the new pairings have paid dividends at the 2019 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships presented by comdirect & ALDI Nord.
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Two of the partnership changes featured 2017 world champions Evandro Goncalves and Andre Loyola after the two Brazilians captured the world title at Vienna where the pair defeated Austrians Clemens Doppler and Alexander Horst for the gold medal.
Here Saturday on the Am Rothenbaum Stadium centre court, the reigning world champions posted wins with different partners at the US$1-million event over pairs from Australia and Austria by winning a third-and-deciding set in each match.
In the afternoon’s second centre court match Saturday, the 16th-seeded Evandro and new partner Bruno Oscar Schmidt defeated Cole Durant/Damien Schumann of Australia 2-1 (19-21, 21-15, 18-16) in a 61-minute Pool I meeting. Bruno captured the 2015 world title in the Netherlands with Alison Cerutti before topping the Rio 2016 Olympic podium.
Evandro Goncalves (green shirt) of Brazil blocking against Australian Damien Schumann
In the evening in the next to last centre court match of the day, the 17th-seeded Andre and new mate George Wanderley posted a 2-1 (21-19, 13-21, 16-14) win over 32nd-seeded Robin Seidl/Philipp Waller of Austria in a 55-minute Pool H contest.
Combined with wins on Friday by 20th-seeded Alison/Alvaro Filho and 24th-seeded Vitor Felipe/Pedro Solberg over teams from the United States and Germany, respectively, the Brazilian men are 4-0 in the 2019 FIVB World Championship with two pool play matches remaining for each team.
Prior to the current Brazil partnership lineups, Evandro was playing with Vitor Felipe at the end of last season while Bruno was paired with Pedro Solberg, Andre with Alison, Alvaro with Saymon Barbosa and George with Thiago Santos Barbosa.
“We didn’t start well today, and everything was going their way in the first set," said Evandro after his match with the Australians. “They were serving well, playing smartly on offence and digging a lot of balls. We slowly got back to the game and the most important thing is that we had the patience to turn the match around. They had a match point against us, but we remained calm and I had a good serve that put us back on track. We need to learn our lessons from this match and make sure we don’t make the same mistakes against Venezuela.”
Bruno said he was “surprised in this match. I made four mistakes right at the start of the game and that put them in a very comfortable situation. We fought for the first set, but they were playing well. We had a match point against us, but Evandro had a very good serve and kept us alive. But overall it was good to have such a tough match to start the tournament. I prefer that than having an easy one which will make you feel relaxed way too early, especially in a tournament like this, in which we don’t get to play every day.
