Rosarito: World ranking leaders Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan of Qatar had their backs against the wall coming into their third pool play match in the Rosarito Elite 16 event of the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour on Friday.

Following a straight-set (21-16, 25-23) upset to Polish Michal Bryl and Bartosz Losiak in the morning, the Tokyo Olympic bronze medallists needed a win against Austrians Robin Seidl and Philipp Waller to break pool in Mexico and they did just that, downing the Europeans in two sets (21-13, 21-16) and advancing to the quarterfinals, where they will meet Czech Olympians Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner.

“It feels great to make it to the quarterfinals,” Cherif commented. “It’s the first event of the year for most of the teams here and it’s not easy to get our rhythm back. I feel like we haven’t been focused the entire time as we should and at this level, any mistake costs too much. We’re adjusting things match by match and now with the quarterfinals coming up, it gets even more serious and we’re going all in.”

Cherif and Ahmed finished second on Pool A, ranking behind Bryl and Losiak, the winners of last week’s Challenge tournament in Tlaxcala. The Polish completed their perfect pool play campaign with their third straight-set (21-15, 21-19) victory, this one against Brazilians Evandro Goncalves and Alvaro Filho. They will now face Italians Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi.