The Bulgarian men's U18 national team made an impressive start to its participation at the 2026 European Championship in Cisterna di Latina (Italy). Head coach Miroslav Zhivkov's team defeated the reigning European champion France 3:1 (25:23, 18:25, 25:21, 25:19) in their first match in Group II. Our team was supported by a significant number of fans.

The French are the reigning champions from the previous European Championship in 2024, which took place in Sofia and Plovdiv. It is worth noting that France conducts centralized training.
The Bulgarian team showed character after losing the second set and managed to impose their game in crucial moments. The third set was particularly important, in which our national players capitalized excellently on the opponent's errors. In this set alone, Bulgaria scored 14 points from France's errors against only 4 for the opponent.
Team statistics show how evenly matched the game was, but also where Bulgaria made the difference. Our team finished with 12 successful blocks against 7 for France, had 43% attack efficiency against 42% for the opponent, and better positive reception ", 57% against 49%. France scored more points from attack ", 51 against 43, as well as more aces ", 4 against 1, but made more errors, which proved decisive. Bulgaria scored 37 points from opponent errors against 26 for France.
Nikola Gradinarov was the top scorer for Bulgaria with 15 points.

Pavel Dzhenev added 14, while Kristiyan Kosev and Nikolay Veselinov scored 10 points each. For France, Matteo Mrozek scored 23 points, and Antonin Bonnar added 12, but even that was not enough for a win.
Earlier, in the other match from the group, Romania defeated the Netherlands 3:1.
Bulgaria's next match is tomorrow against Germany. The game starts at 13:30 Bulgarian time.

photos: cev.eu