Italian wildcards stun Evandro/Andre to advance to last 16

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Ranghieri has eyes on his fellow Italians now after this morning's brilliant win

It’s the biggest shock of the Fort Lauderdale Major so far! The 2017 World Champions Evandro Goncalves and Andre Loyola Stein are out of the tournament.

Italian wildcards Alex Ranghieri and Marco Caminati produced a brilliant display to stun their South American rivals in the first match of day four of the competition.

Ranghieri and Caminati took just 40 minutes to register one of the biggest wins of their team career. The Europeans took the first set 21-17 against last year’s silver medalists and didn’t look back in the second with Ranghieri dominating at the net. He made 13 vital blocks as the pair went on to take the second set and the match 21-17.

Alec and Marco’s reward for their superb straight sets victory is an all-Italian round of 16 tie against Olympic silver medalists and reigning European champions Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai.

The draw guarantees a European teams in the quarterfinals. Not for 22 years has a team from Europe won on American sand.

“We’ve played the World Champs and now we play the European Champs,” said a delighted Ranghieri. “We knew it was going to be a tough game, I mean they’re the World Champions.

“But we said we’d take them down and we did. Marco and I said, ‘what the worst that could happen, we could lose’.”

A disappointed Andre, who became the youngest men’s World Champion when winning in Vienna last year said: “We struggled with out sideout and when you play like that you can’t go further in such a big tournament.

“Ranghieri had a great blocking game and we gave them several points. And when you give any team the lead it’s always hard to come back.”

You can watch the big Italian derby live and exclusive on BeachStream at 3pm EST.

Ranghieri was on fire on the block in the second set