The Germans dethroned Italian Olympic medalists Lupo and Nicolai

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Thole prevails over Nicolai at the net

Defeating big teams is becoming a sweet routine for Julius Thole and Clemens Wickler. The up-and-comer Germans added another one to their list in front of their home fans as they took Italian Olympic medalists Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo down in three sets (21-17, 18-21, 15-13) to win their second game in the Beach Volleyball FIVB World Tour Finals presented by Vodafone in Hamburg.

“It’s unbelievable that we have won our first two matches here,” an ecstatic Wickler said after the game. “It was a morning game and I really didn’t expect to have so many people supporting us. We gave everything we had and we won a very difficult game.

“It gives us more confidence. It’s a victory against a big team and we know we’ll be playing big teams for the entire week, so it’s good to see that we can play well and beat some of these teams and I hope we can do it again later today.”

The Germans’ focus was tested in the third set when they were faced with an early 5-1 deficit, but made the right plays to disrupt the Italians and come from behind to win it.

“We just tried to focus on ourselves,” Wickler added. “We knew we could come back, we had done it a few times before. We believed in us all the time and never gave up.”

The somewhat unexpected positive results didn’t change Wickler’s and Thole’s plans in Hamburg, though. Even two steps closer to the elimination round, the 23-year-old defender and the 21-year-old blocker will keep taking the tournament step-by-step.

“Our first goal was to get out of the pool and it remains the same,” Wickler remarked. “We’ll try to win every game we can and we’ll see how far we can get.”

The Germans will play against another tough team, the one of Latvians Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins this evening at the Red Bull Beach Arena. A couple of hours earlier, Lupo and Nicolai will match up with Poland’s Bartosz Losiak and Piotr Kantor.

That's why they call it thinking on your feet 😉 Play back today's #HamburgFinals matches on BeachStream [link in bio] @beachteam_thole_wickler @vodafone_de @hamburg_de

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