Corrientes, Argentina, August, 22, 2015 – Cuba was near to a harsh defeat, but Lopez scored a tournament-high 35 points to outscore Bulgaria in a heart-stopping tie break (16-25, 21-25, 25-20, 28-26, 15-12) that gave the Caribbeans the chance to fight for the 9th place in this World Championship.
Miguel Angel Lopez Castro’s performance was as astonishing as determinant for Cuba’s victory. Bulgaria had it all set to keep a comfy win (25-16, 25-21) with a smart distribution by Nikolay Manchev and the scoring capacity of Plamen Shekerdzhiev (19 points) and Stefan Ivanov (24). But Lopez started its chore in the third set and infected his partners with will and envy to win.
From that moment onwards, Cuban setter Adrian Goide trusted the hot balls only to his brightest star. The offensive power of Lopez was too much for a downcasted Bulgaira, that suffered the rage of the Cuban spiker.
In the 5th set, the Europeans had taken a 10-7 and 12-10 advantage, but Lopez got to the service line and everything changed. Two consecutive aces and another great service smashed by David Pelayo Madan sentenced the score and left Bulgaria with no victory.