Miguel Pereira, Brazil, May 25, 2018 – It was Brazil Day on the courts of the one-star 2018 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour men’s competition in Miguel Pereira, as all eight home pairs managed to proceed to the single elimination rounds. In Friday’s pool play, the only losses any Brazilian teams suffered came from the hands of other Brazilian duos.
Four host country pairs won the four pools and advanced directly to the quarterfinals. The other four, together with teams from Austria, Canada, Colombia and Uruguay, will compete in the first knockout round on Saturday.
Bottom-seeded Felipe Cavazin Numasawa and Vinicius Gomes Cardoso de Araujo, who came into the main draw from Thursday’s qualifications, delivered the biggest upset of the day, starting off with a 2-1 (16-21, 21-19, 15-8) victory over top-seeded compatriots Arthur Diego Mariano Lanci and Hevaldo Sabino Moreira. They went on to beat Colombia’s Edgardo Cuello and Yhan Cuesta 2-0 (21-12, 21-16) to top Pool A, while Arthur and Hevaldo knocked Slovenia’s Sergej Drobnic and Gasper Plahutnik out of contention with a 2-0 (21-14, 21-13) win.
The story of Pool was quite similar. Qualification wild cards Vinicius Rezende Costa Freitas and Luciano Ferreira de Paula surprised second-seeded Uruguayans Mauricio Sebastian Vieyto Acosta and Marco Cairus Lucarelli with a 2-0 (21-19, 21-16) shutout before outplaying compatriots Thiago Santos Barbosa and Marcus Borlini De Oliveira 2-0 (21-15, 21-12) for the direct passage to the quarters. The third Brazilian duo in this pool, Rodrigo Vieira Bernat and Harley Marques Silva took the third place with a 2-0 (21-19, 21-15) victory over the team from Uruguay.
In the only pool final that lasted three sets, Ramon Ferreira Gomes and Alvaro Marcelino Santos Andrade snatched a nail-biting 2-1 (17-21, 25-23, 17-15) come-from-behind win over third-seeded Austrians Joerg Wutzl and Simon Fruehbauer. These two pairs had beaten Sneider Rivas and Sebastian Denis from Colombia and Dallas Keith and Jasmin Cull from Canada, respectively, in straight sets, before Keith and Cull denied the Colombians a pass to the next round with a 2-0 (21-17, 21-11) shutout.
Pool D offered an all-Brazilian battle for the top of the standings, in which Oscar Brandao and Leonardo Gomes hammered out a 2-0 (21-19, 21-16) victory over Joalisson Laurindo Gomes and Eduardo Davi Marinho da Rocha. The third place in the pool went to fourth-seeded Canadians Gabriel Burlacu and Jake MacNeil after their 2-1 (21-17, 16-21, 15-11) win over fifth-seeded Uruguayans Gaston Baldi Alvarez and Hans Hannibal.