Groningen, Netherlands, June 19, 2015 - Netherlands overpowered Portugal 3-0 (25-18, 25-21, 25-23) as they were able to stay calm in the crucial moments of this encounter.
Netherlands coach Gido Vermeulen: Our start today was a bit rusty, especially because we made too many mistakes in service. But one of the improvements this team has made the last couple of weeks, is that we stay calm. We can always trust on our service and block. Besides that, our passing was very solid today. Hopefully we can repeat this performance tomorrow.
Netherlands captain Nimir Abdelaziz: We won 3-0 today but it didn’t feel like an easy win on the court. We made many breaks on our own service, but sometimes we allowed Portugal to come back too easy. If we stay calm and play our game, we are the better team. We are quite focused during the big points.
Portugal coach Hugo Silva: We made too many mistakes today and I’m not happy about that. The Netherlands served really strong and we had no answer to that. We are going to analyze this match thoroughly so that we can improve our game tomorrow. We can probably do better in passing and blocking. I’m confident that my players will play better tomorrow.
Portugal's Fabricio Silva: We started very badly today. The Dutch service was too hard for us today, so we had many troubles to score our side-out. Tomorrow is another match, hopefully we can do better then.