Kevin Tillie (France) led all scorers today with 14 points
Kyoto, Japan, June 6, 2015 - France kept their 2015 World League campaign rolling strong on Saturday against host Japan, with an impressive 3-0 win (25-12, 25-14, 28-26) to remain undefeated in the tournament. Coach Laurent Tillie was quite pleased with his team’s effort today, in particular in serving and blocking. As for Japan, their captain Kunihiro Shimizu noted his side need to show more aggression if they are to compete with this French team.
France coach Laurent Tillie: Our team prepared really well for this match, and our serve and block worked well today. Those two aspects of our game led to a good result today. But perhaps tomorrow will be more difficult. Sometimes matches are easy to win, but they cannot always be 3-0. We won today, but we need to prepare a little more in order to do well tomorrow.
France captain Benjamin Toniutti: Our team started really well, and we felt really good. I’m really happy with our preparation for this match. In the third set, Japan changed up their style, and that threw us off a little. But we managed to take the third. I expect tomorrow will be more difficult, but we’ll do our best.
Japan coach Masashi Nambu: In the first and second sets France’s serving was really strong, and we couldn’t play as we had hoped before this match. Last week in Okayama our players managed to get some chances from our blocking, but today we just couldn’t do that. Masahiro Yanagida and Hiroaki Asano played well today, and I hope that can motivate our other players, because everyone wants to start.
Japan captain Kunihiro Shimizu: Team has to perform as we did in the third set, for every match. A few players were too concerned with making mistakes today, so I think we need to be more agressive if we are to beat France. Today Asano and Yanagida played well, and I feel they always change the atmosphere for us, and they really helped us a lot today.