Bologna, Italy, September 22, 2018 - Brazil booked their ticket to the Final Six of the 2018 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship as on Saturday they stormed to a 3-0 victory over Slovenia. The players coached by Renan Dal Zotto did not leave any chances to their opponents and despite Slovenia’s attempts to react, Tine Urnaut and his teammates could not find a proper response to the strong performance on the service line by their opponents.
Renan Dal Zotto, head coach of Brazil: “Today we played on a good level. We performed well in almost all the aspects of the game: serve, counter-attack, defence, block-defence and we played with our middle blockers. We are happy with the win today, but tomorrow is another day and we must work a lot in order to be ready for the most important phase of the World Championship. The match against Belgium will be another opportunity for us to develop.”
Bruno Rezende, captain of Brazil: “We hope to develop in the next days and who knows, maybe play another final? It would be a dream come true, but we are dreamers and play hard to achieve our goal. Everybody should count with us. In today’s match, we were able not to make any errors. We were good at blocking and on serve and we showed that when there is pressure, we perform even better. This has always been a characteristic of our team.”
Luiz Felipe Fonteles, player of Brazil: “It wasn’t such an easy match as it might seem from off the court. We were ready for a tough match. What they did yesterday in their matchup against Belgium was also unexpected, a very high-level game. However, what we studied for, what we trained for - we were able to execute in the match today and that is why I believe we were able to achieve a 3-0 win. It is amazing for us that we go to Turin, but we must stay focused also on our next match. To us it is important to keep developing, to keep growing. I would like to tell to all the Italian fans “Grazie di cuore!” for creating such an incredible atmosphere. They really inspire us to play better and better.”
Slobodan Kovac, head coach of Slovenia: “We had our chances to win the first two sets, the game was close, but the difference was made by the small details and the small imperfections. Brazil played extremely well today and complicated our plans. I want to congratulate them. We entered the court motivated as we had to. Qualifying for the next round seems now impossible. We hope and we must do a nice match against Australia, so that we could find ourselves again. For the very first time we play on such a great level, but in order to be among the six best teams in the world, one should give something more.”
Tine Urnaut, captain of Slovenia: “The difference was made by their continuous high-level performance in side-out. They have a good setter, good opposite spikers, better reception and they made it difficult for us from the service line. They were better as a whole. We, on the other hand, did not take our chances – we created some counter-attacks, but we missed some basic points, as we did not score after perfect reception. It will be difficult for us now to proceed to the next phase, but we will give our best tomorrow against Australia. It was really nice seeing so many fans today, unfortunately we couldn’t make happy our Slovenian supporters, who travelled all the way to Bologna to cheer for us, but I hope tomorrow we will do so.”