Slovenia confident as co-host of European Volleyball Championship

The players cannot wait for the tournament to start after training together and playing warm-up matches for three months, as they will be cheered by the home crowd in Ljubljana's Stožice Arena.

This is one of the reasons that Slovenians are being optimistic and announcing the fight for the gold medal, which would be an improvement on the country's best result at European championships, the silver in 2015 in Bulgaria and Italy.

"Although we don't want to put much pressure on ourselves, I'd say that we're interested in being first. Not only in the group, but overall. You have to have high goals," said Slovenia's libero Jani Kovačič.

Coached by Italian Alberto Giuliani, Slovenia are playing in Group C, which also features Belarus, Finland, North Macedonia, Turkey and defending champions Russia, which Kovačič believes will be the main obstacle on the way to a...