Jastrzębski Węgiel dropped out of the CEV Champions League in the worst way: losing to Polish rivals Zaksa. Had it been to a foreign club, it would save itself the humiliation of conceding bragging rights to their compatriots. Regardless, Jastrzębski’s players are very adamant in stating that they have already turned the page on the matter, and that their focus now rests solely on PlusLiga (Siatka.org):
“It seems to me that you can not say that something went wrong, we played at our level from this season. We must face it and work to be better, maybe stabilize our performance a bit. At the moment, a team like ZAKSA plays at a very high level all the time. We can not be satisfied that we have dropped out, but we can feel satisfaction from reaching this phase of the games. Now we have another goal – to get to the play-off in PlusLiga, so we can not be sad at home and hang our heads. From tomorrow, we focus on the next match.” – Lukas Kampa
“Our adventure in the international arena is over. This chapter is already closed to us. We did what we could, but it was not enough for ZAKSA. Perhaps the fact that we combined our PlusLiga schedule with the Champions League made us tired. Now we can focus all the energy, effort and concentration in PlusLiga and do everything to improve.” – Salvador Oliva
Different from Zaksa, which leads PlusLiga, Jastrzebski currently sits in 6th place in the competition’s standings with a 15-11 record. However, it should gain some ground on the standings, as it has everything to go 4-0 in its last games of the season, as they will face 10th placed Katowice, 12th placed Espadon, 13th placed Bedzin, and last placed Kielce in their last match ups of the regular season.
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