2011 Grand Prix Week 1

2011 World Grand Prix Week 1: August 5th – 7th, 2011.

Results with Stats: Click to enlarge

FIVB Pictures:

Power Quotes:

August 5th:

Brazil captain Fabiana Claudino: “We did a better job today than we expected, especially blocking, service and attack. I am happy to beat Japan.”

German coach Giovanni Guidetti: “The Korean team played very well. The German team also played really hard, but Korean player No.10 Kim Yeon-Koung was outstanding. The reason for the loss is that we could not defend against her play. The German team is still weak in blocking, which we have to get over.”

Cuba coach Juan Gala Rodriguez: “Congratulations Russia on their win over us. We understand Russia’s great experience and skill. Despite the loss, I think we obtained some experience from playing Russia in this match.”

USA coach Hugh McCutcheon: First, congratulations for Serbia for playing a great game. I am glad we won this game.

Peru captain Elena Keldibekova: “We did not play well. Most of us are new, young players. We also spent less time training together. We have shown our strength and fight, but they just did not work out well today.”

Kazakhstan coach Baitureyev Bakhytzhan: “I want to repeat what our captain said, that our players are very young without much experience, and they don’t have enough confidence. Congratulations to China, they have strong team and players.”

August 6th:

Poland captain, Milena Radecka: “I’m really disappointed that we lost. The game was very close, especially in tie-break. But we made two faults at the beginning of decisive set, then we weren’t able to finish any of three match balls. Tie break is a lottery. Today it was Dominican Republic who won it. But the tournament is not finished yet and we will try to do better versus Italy.”

Thailand captain Wilavan Apinyapong: “I’m very happy to beat Cuba. They are such a great team with exceptional skills. We played according to the head coach’s strategic plan and tried to reduce the unforced mistakes in the first two sets, which we lost. Though losing two sets, we still played cool. We know we could beat them and we did it finally.”

USA captain Jennifer Tamas: It was a really good match with Kazakhstan. We made an improvement compared with yesterday and I hope this improvement can be carried on in our next matches.

Peru coach Luca Cristofani: We played far below our standard. However, I just wanted my young players to obtain more experience from this tournament. That’s why I’m happy with the result although we lost to Russia.

Brazil coach Ze Roberto: I am very proud of my team; every player was excellent. In the beginning, there were mistakes and our players were down. Even after losing the second set, Fabiana gave energy to her teammates to keep going and we could finish the game with the victory.

Korea coach Kim Hyung-Sil: People think today’s match, Korea vs Japan, was a matter of pride for both teams and would give us added pressure, but actually we didn’t have that much mental pressure in today’s match. But we now realize Japan have strong organizational power and they demonstrated this again. And our team had many unforced errors during the match. Before today’s match, we had practice session on strong serves and receiving serves. We tried to use this during the match, but things didn’t go well. We had many unforced errors when receiving, especially on serves coming from the left. From now on, we will do our best in the remaining matches of the World Grand Prix and devote all our strength towards next year’s London Olympics.

August 7th:

Korea captain Lee Sook-Ja: I think today’s match with Brazil was hard for us. But every one of our players did well in every set. We had some unforced errors and now we have some difficult away matches. But based on our experiences in our home matches, we will make greater efforts to show better play and better organizational power in Poland and Japan.

Germany captain Christiane Furst: I would like to congratulate Japan for their victory. They showed their best performance on the court whereas our play was very disappointing. We have learned many things from them and we will be more prepared for the rest of the 2011 FIVB World Grand Prix season.

Cuba captain Yusidey Silie: It’s our first time to win in this year’s World Grand Prix. We still have many things to learn and develop for a better future. We will continue our fight next week and hope that we can improve our game and luck.

China coach Yu Juemin: “First of all, congratulations to USA, they are a strong opponent and they did very well in this match. This match is of great significance, helped us to expose the gap in basic skills, we need to make a serious summary on these two matches later.”

Serbia coach Zoran Terzic: “We knew it before the match that it would be difficult for us. We fought two hard games, and we made some change in this match. We had some mistakes, but totally I am satisfied with the result.”

Poland coach, Alojzy Swiderek: “Congratulations to the Italian team and good luck for the next tournaments. I don’t blame my players that they lost first set, but I expected that they would win the third set. But probably the key factor was the Italians experience. It was our first serious tournament this season and we did what we could. Now we go to Zielona Gora for the next tournament. I will take the same team, because the others are not ready yet.”

Dominican Republic coach, Marcos Kwiek: “We are sad because we lost. Regarding today’s match, we can be thankful that we won one point, because we didn’t play well. We had many opportunities in attack, but we didn’t use it. Usually we score with 50-percent efficiency, today it was much lower. Now we go to Japan to play in more difficult group. We have to continue working.”

Match Videos/ Highlights:

Italy vs Poland Full Match