Cuba fight back to beat Serbia in Belgrade and keep rising

Despite consistently facing adversity in the second week of the Volleyball Nations League 2025, Cuba continued to climb the standings on Thursday in Belgrade.

One day after beating Germany just a few hours after the arrival of some of their players to Belgrade, the Caribbean came back from a first-set loss to triumph 3-1 (22-25, 25-22, 25-16, 25-16) over Serbia, frustrating the crowd at the Belgrade Arena.

With just two of their four matches completed this week in Belgrade, the Cubans have already collected twice as many points as they did two weeks ago in Rio de Janeiro, and now appear in eighth place in the VNL standings, with nine points (three wins, three losses) - they were 15th just 48 hours ago at the start of the week.

The Caribbean were dominant in all accounts against the Serbians, having a significant advantage in blocks (18 to four) and aces (ten to three). The winners also got more points from kills (45 to 43), which helped compensate for their higher number of errors (29 to 24).

Individually, opposite Jose Masso was the main standout in the Cuban victory, producing a match-high 19 points with a solid all-around performance that saw him register 14 kills, three blocks and two aces. The top scorer in the VNL 2025, outside hitter Marlon Yant was also unstoppable, delivering 18 points (14 kills, three aces, one block).

“We’re still tired after the traveling issues we had, but everybody is making sacrifices for the team,” Masson remarked. “We’re pushing each other all the time to keep the level high, and we’ll keep fighting until the end of the week here.”

Serbia, which wasted the second opportunity to triumph in front of their home fans and sit at the bottom of the VNL standings with three points (one win, five losses), got 14 points (12 kills, two aces) from star opposite Drazen Luburić.

“I think their experience was the difference,” Luburić said. “Most of our players are still young and are not very used to matches of this level. But they’re learning lessons from these matches. We need to keep our heads up and continue working.”