Ruse, Bulgaria, September 13, 2018 – The Netherlands achieved its first win at the 2018 FIVB World Championship after 3-1 (25-21, 25-13, 23-25, 25-13) against China in the opening match for today in Pool B.
Gido Vermeulen, coach of the Netherlands: “I’m satisfied not only with the result today, but with the way we played as well. I think we played really well in serve and block. We were making point after point with these two elements. It was nice to see my players to perform so well. We knew exactly where we had to serve. The boys executed the plan excellent. Brazil played a great game yesterday against France. They had free day today, so they will be rested and ready for the match against us. We can play with free minds against them, because they are the best team in the world and we will try to show them that we can play a good volleyball as well.”
Jasper Diefenbach, player of the Netherlands: “We knew that this will be a very important game for us because we have lost the first one against Canada. We needed this victory to past through the second round. We already had a lost, so it was really important to win today. And we did it, we did a good job. I think we had two amazing sets, the second and the fourth one, and only this third set we should have won but in the final moments of the set we made some mistakes. We did a great team performance, some great scouting. We have scouting team who is there 24/7 for us, scouting the opponent. Luckily, I had plan work today, so I am very proud of everything we did. We should keep it up, continuing with doing that. I expect a tough match tomorrow. Brazil is an amazing team, one of the best teams in the world, so we have absolutely nothing to lose. We will give our best and we will see what will happen. We will have some rest now, some time to prepare. We are going to give our best shot to win tomorrow.”
Daan Van Haarlem, player of the Netherlands: I’m really happy with this victory! We achieved our first win at this World Championship and it is a really important step for us. Our main goal is to qualify for the second round and now we can be satisfied because we played well today. In the first two sets we played great. We had some difficulties in the third set, which we lost, but in the next one we managed to be concentrated and to achieve this important victory.
Raul Lozano, coach of China: “In the beginning of the match it looked like it will be a tough game, but in the first two sets the Netherlands started to play really well in block and attack. They had two players with a very good level of attack and we didn’t manage to stop them. Now we will try to change the mental of the players, to motivate them for our next match, and I hope my team will play better tomorrow.“