Marcus Ellis and Chris Langridge’s European Championships looks quite different after the withdrawal of the Danish top seeds Mogensen/Boe. But the English Commonwealth champions are taking it easy so far.
They acknowledged that for them to pull out is probably a relief for anyone who was going to play them, but the English are quick to shut down the building expectations.
- We’ve got two tough matches before we even get to a semi-final where, you know, we have got to beat someone who is higher ranked than us in the quarter-final, so, for us, we can’t really look that far, Ellis said to Badminton Europe in the mixed zone.
- If we get to the semi-final, I am sure there will be someone strong there as well. So regardless of whether they have pulled out, you could say;’ we’ve got a chance to get to the final’ and this, but I certainly don’t see it in that way. And we have to play very, very well to get there any way.
Higher concentration tomorrow
Ellis and Langridge won their first-round match earlier on Wednesday against Osele and Strobl from Italy; 21-12, 21-17.
- Maybe it was one of those matches we weren’t really switched on for and we could have played a little bit better, but it was enough to win our first round here and whoever we’ll play tomorrow I think we will be more prepared, Ellis said.
- Today was 20 percent intensity, we just did enough to win the match. Tomorrow, obviously, we will be more serious. The people we are playing the rest of the tournament, like Marcus said that we have great players, so concentration will be slightly different, Langridge added.
Continue the form from Commonwealth
The men’s doubles returned from the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games not more than a week ago but hopes to continue the form from the tournament, which resulted in gold medal.
- I think we played quite a few matches out there so it’s kind of real matches-experience because we haven’t had loads of matches I the last kind of six-seven months because of certain things, Langridge pointed out and continued;
- But it is also confidence, we played quite well out there so we trying to kind of continue the form we had there. Which is obviously is quite tough because travelling half around the world a week ago isn’t the easiest, and then come and play another tournament.
Find more results from the 2018 European Championships here.