Panagiotis Gionis’ Bogoria was clearly superior in the away first semi-final against Pontoise Cerzy and with a 3-0 set victory became a big favorite to enter the European Cup Men’s Table Tennis final.
In his only individual match, the Greek ace of his opponent also clearly excelled and, contributing to the valuable team victory, he is very close to his third European final at interclub level, the second in this particular institution.
The decisive second semi-final takes place at the home of Bogoria Grodzisk on Friday at 19:00 Greece. As long as Gionis and his teammates take advantage of the serious advantage and “seal” the qualification, then another team from Poland, Dzialdovo, awaits them in the double final.
For the first match in France, it should be noted that neither team lined up in full. These days there are two international tournaments, in Korea and the Czech Republic, and especially Pontoise was deprived of all three of its top athletes: Korean Lim Yonghun, Portuguese Marcos Freitas and Algerian Mehdi Boulousa. They are athletes who strengthened it in the first phase of the Champions League (along with the French Flavio Mourier), where Pontoise took second place in the first group with 2 wins and 2 losses and the right to continue to the final stage of the Europe Cup.
The French club competed with young Dominican Cabrera and Frenchmen Dani and Laros.
Bogoria did not have in its composition the main Poles Marek Badowski and Milos Rezimski. She, however, again relied on Japan’s Jin Takuya and, along with the presence of Gionis, had the odds on her side, as it turned out.
The trio was completed by the 19-year-old Polish Mikal Gavlas, and in the rotation of the athletes, the team showed so well prepared, that it was particularly effective from the beginning and only lost one individual set.
The Polish club had also started this year’s European campaign from the top competition and had taken second place in the second group.
In detail, the evolution of the match Podois-Bogoria 0-3:
Rafael Cabrera-Gene Takuya 1-3 (9-11, 6-11, 11-8, 6-11)
Danny Lo-Panagiotis Gionis 0-3 (7-11, 4-11, 7-11)
Tomas Laros-Mikal Gavlas 0-3 (4-11, 9-11, 7-11)
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