Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 17, 2015 – Serbia coach Nikola Grbic was a relieved man after his team managed to fight back against world champions Poland to secure their place in the FIVB Volleyball World League semifinals on Saturday.
Serbia will now play Pool I winners and defending World League champions USA, while Poland will face France.
Nikola Grbic, coach Serbia – “We almost had a ticket back home, but then we managed to win a very difficult match against the world champions. So I am happy and the victory is deserved by the whole team, because everybody had a small part to play in this game, everybody contributed to this victory.
“Two months of hard work won’t be forgotten because of one bad day and that is why I am so happy. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow; we are in the semifinals of this huge tournament, against a really strong team. We will see on the court who is the better team.”
Aleksandar Atanasijevic, player Serbia – “This is a big thing for us. We lost our last match against a team that was without four of its main players, but tonight we showed that we when play our game we can even beat the world champions. I believe in this team and I hope we can improve our level for the semifinal. The big lesson for us is if you don’t play 100% you cannot win. Tomorrow we play against the USA, so we need to focus on them because we do not have much time.”
Stephane Antiga, coach Poland – “I don’t like to lose. We may have reached the semifinals in first place in the pool, but we should have played better and had more control of the block and dig. We had the chance to win at times, but didn’t and we need to be stronger tomorrow. Serbia improved from their first match, against Italy. Now we are ready and focused on the next match.”
Bartosz Kurek, player Poland – “We are not happy that the match lasted five sets. We wanted to qualify in first place, so after we won the third set and guaranteed that place we wanted to finish the match as quickly as possible, but we didn’t play as well as we did against Italy. We know that France are a great team and because our coach is French we will expect a very tough game.”