Historic victory: Bulgaria reaches second World Volleyball finals in 55 years

This is the second time in volleyball history that the Bulgarian national team makes it to the world finals.

The Bulgarian players won  a definitive 3:1 after a series of spectacular plays (with 20:25, 25:23, 21:25 and 25:22 points).

Bulgaria started the match again with the usual lineup of Italian coach Gianlorenzo Blengini: Simeon Nikolov, Alex Grozdanov, Alexander Nikolov, Asparuh Asparuhov, Iliya Petkov, Martin Atanasov and libero Damyan Kolev. During the match, Preslav Petkov came on as a substitute.

In the semifinals, the Bulgarian players made a turnaround from 0:2 to 3:2 in the quarterfinal match versus the USA.

Alexander Nikolov performed brilliantly, scoring 29 points. The strong play of the entire team, combined with Nikolov's play, placed Bulgaria among the four best teams on the planet - for the first time since 2006.

The final of the volleyball world championship in Manila is tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. In it, Bulgaria will fight for gold with the winner of the match Italy - Poland which will be player later today.