Bulgaria overcame European rival Serbia and Montenegro 3-1 to take the bronze medal of the 2006 men's volleyball World Championship here on Sunday.

The Bulgarian, who suffered a 1-3 loss to Poland in the semi-finals on Saturday, controlled the match and won with 22-25, 25-23,25-23, 25-23.

"It was a very beautiful and very difficult game, both of us have had very strong tournaments," said Bulgaria's head coach Martin Stoev. "Maybe from our part we can say our motivation was a little bit higher. Serbia and Montenegro have won medals at the Olympics, World Championships and European Championships, and we haven't won anything for 20 years."

The last time that Bulgaria won a medal in the World Championships was in 1986 in Paris, France.

Bulgaria suffered from a slow start as Serbia and Montenegro took the opener 25-22 as Nikola Grbic blocked on the right to clinch it.

Bulgaria raced into a 4-0 lead at the start of the second set and forced Igor Kolakovic, head coach of Serbia and Montenegro call a time-out.

But things didn't turn to be better as Bulgaria defeated Serbia and Montenegro's comeback and extend their lead to 16-13.

The Serbia and Montenegro team tried to stay in the match and leveled at 23-23, but Plamen Konstantinov, capitan of Bulgaria, brought up his team the victory with a pair of spikes.

Inspired by the second set win, the Bulgarians totally controlled the game in the following sets and won with a pair of 25-23.

Matey Kaziyski scored 20 points for Bulgaria, Boyan Yordanov had 14, while Plamen Konstantinov and Evgeni Ivanov added 13 and 12 respectively.

Ivan Miljkovic led the game with 22 points for Serbia and Montenegro. Goran Vujevic had 18.