Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 18, 2015 – Serbia will meet either Poland or France in Sunday’s FIVB Volleyball World League final after they defeated reigning champions USA 3-2 on Saturday.
It will be Serbia’s fifth attempt and first since 2010 to win a title that they have yet to claim.
Nikola Grbic, Serbia Coach – “What can I say? It was a big match. We were 10-6 down, we had a match point. Yesterday we were already home (eliminated), if you know what I mean... It’s a great joy, I’m so happy now. But we don't have enough time to think about it, we just have to think about what we need to do tomorrow. But today I’m very, very happy.”
Dragan Stankovic, Serbia captain – “It was an incredible match. Yesterday, 14 hours ago, we were packing our bags to go home. Yesterday was a difficult match, but today we had the opportunity to fight for a place in the final. The USA are a good team and we fought hard. We were close in the third set, but they came back. We knew that if we are playing at the highest level, we can do anything. We stayed calm and we tried to fight back and in the end we won this game. Tomorrow we will fight for the gold.”
USA coach John Speraw: “I’m disappointed with the end result. I am disappointed with our start.I didn’t feel that we brought the level of focus or competitive energy that we played with in the entire match the day before. Once we went down 0-2, we found it. We made a really valiant effort to try to come back and win this match and I thought we had a really good opportunity to do so.”
David Lee, USA captain: “Ultimately, it came down to us not executing on a few big points. I think we missed a few serves, missed a few swings. We didn’t pass great at the end of the set. I think there were a few controversial calls that didn’t go our way. That was the main difference in the match.”