Take note, the last time Germany beat the United States in a world level event was 6 years ago during the Final Round of the 2012 FIVB World League.
Yesterday, Coach Giani and his German squad were too much to handle against Coach Speraw and his team. After beating Poland last week, the Germans won their VNL preliminary match against USA with 5 starters from the 2016 Olympics namely Anderson, Christenson, Russell, Holt and Erik Shoji.
Germany 3-0 USA (25-19 25-22 25-13)
We saw the entire match and the Americans struggled with the German float serves (11 aces).
At the post match press conference, Coach Speraw was very open to admit that his team played their WORST match since he took over in 2013.
“This was maybe the worst match I’ve seen our team play in the last five years I’ve coached this program, so it’s obviously very disappointing. We just didn’t pass the ball and we didn’t put any pressure on them from our own service line. It was just a complete and total lost on the serve and pass side of the game, which is the most important side of winning. That’s why you saw the scores the way they were.
“The German team certainly serve a great floater, and periodically over the course of the years we’ve had matches where float serves hurt us. To get hurt that badly by all their float serves, we just didn’t take care of the passing that we needed to take care of, so we’re just going to have to get a little better and see if we can play better tomorrow night.”
Team Captain David Smith also admitted that the tough serves from Germany was the main factor they lost.
On the other hand, Coach Giani had nothing but words of praises for his team.
“We had a great competition tonight against a big team like USA. I like how we played and how we used our energy on the court. We beat them with our serves. We’ll approach this competition match by match. When we prepare for our next match, our strategy changes every time.”
What’s next for both teams?
USA plays Australia while Germany faces hosts Canada later today.