Nagano, Japan, October 6, 2019 - Russia ended the Nagano round of the 2019 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Cup with a 3-1 (25-19, 21-25, 25-19, 25-21) win over Egypt at the White Ring arena on Sunday, Yaroslev Podlesnykh top-scoring with 17 points for Tuomas Sammelvuo’s side.
Russia coach Tuomas Sammelvuo: “I want to congratulate my dear colleague, Gido (Vermeulen, Egypt coach) for his work, because I think here, Egypt has made a step forward – they have played at a very stable level with all the teams. Today, volleyball is like this, all the teams play and every game is always a battle. I think today there were a lot of ups and downs, especially in service and reception for float serve for both sides. In the end I think this for us was our best game in service, absolutely, and that was for us absolutely the key of the game. I’m happy because of course we had the pressure of the result after losing two games, especially against Australia was a tough one for us, so I’m happy for all the team and all the players that we did it today. Because those little black moments always have a little bit of an effect also. It was important to get a result from today’s game.
“We always look at scouting and statistics of what we did in attack and so on, but I think to be a very good team we have to do the easy things well, and there are too many of these kind of balls that fall down between the players, communication, or when you set the ball high – the most basic things. They are not seen here (on the scoresheet), but we have to do them better than we are doing in this moment.
“Of course we want to win more games. There will be some great opponents there (in Hiroshima). We will have a ‘home’ game against Japan, there will be a big crowd there. And now we need to manage the fatigue and load on the players and try to heal everybody and move on.”
Russia captain Sergey Grankin: “Egypt played very well in their third and fourth games, and they did so again here. However, our serving – in particular our float serve – worked very well today and gave us good opportunities, which we took. These serves enabled us to see this game out and win. We could have done much better, but the Egyptian team was very good. We will now consider the points we need to improve ahead of the next match and we will be ready for the Hiroshima round.
“The most important thing is to reduce the number of mistakes we make. In particular we made a lot of careless mistakes today, and we need to eliminate them.”
Egypt coach Gido Vermeulen: “I want to congratulate the Russian team and my friend Tuomas (Sammelvuo, Russia coach), they played a great game. I think they were fresher today than we were, you could see that our boys were a little bit tired. But still they did not give up fighting. I’m very proud of how they stayed in the court and stayed in the game. We have (played) five big teams here and we can compete with them on all levels. Today Russia was too strong for us at the net, but especially on the float serve they killed us. We tried to do something back in the same way, tactically, but the Russians have too many options in attack and great setters, so in the end we could not manage to control the game, only for one set. But I’m proud of how my players are representing Egypt here, because they do that in a great way, and they play good volleyball. That’s good for the next round, that we know that we can play good volleyball. We need to rest now and prepare (for) the next games."
On his overall impression of the team’s performance in Nagano:
“First of all, I am very proud of my team that we competed – every game we played here we had chances to win and we made it difficult for other teams. Our win over Australia was very good, our Iran game was a surprise, Brazil we competed on a high level – we played tactically amazingly good volleyball and made it difficult for them. I think Canada we had a chance to win, that’s our only regret of this week here. And Russia was better today, so we have to accept (the result). We go away with two wins, and I think for Egypt that’s a very good start. In the other pool there are some teams we want to beat, so we will try to add some more wins for our team and get confidence for our tournament in January. That’s the most important (thing) for our team, to build our rhythm to have a really good level in January next year for the Olympic qualification.”
Egypt captain Ahmed Abdelhay: “We were playing against one of the strongest teams in the world, Russia, and I would also like to remind you that we played three matches in three days and I counted the number of sets – 13 sets – with three top level teams. This was very tough for us, of course. I felt today that the players were a little bit tired, but even so we tried our best – we were trying to play and fight. In the end we lost but I’m (proud) of the team.”
On how the team will prepare over the next few days:
“I think there is enough time, but we will travel by train for five hours and change the hotel. However, I believe the head coach will be able to manage the situation and that he will tell us when we practice. The recovery and massage will also be important for us to be ready for the next fight.”
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