"We were always looking forward" said also Soga about the energy of her and her teammates
Rosario, Argentina, August 23, 2017 - According to Japan’s main scorer Haruna Soga, what sent the girls safely home on the decisive chapter against Serbia was to remain close and keep supporting each other. Meanwhile, Serbia’s Mila Kocic said to be proud for the way they played.
Haruna Soga, Japan player: “At the match against Turkey we failed and lost, so then we realised how we have to do things. The same happened today for a while, but in that very leveled fifth set we remained close to each other, continuously supporting us and communicating to make it through. We were always looking forward. We are the Asian champions and with that pride we will face the next matches.”
Daichi Saegusa, Japan coach: “We began the match very well, but the girls got nervous when they had to close the game. We lost power in our serves and committed many unforced errors. Besides that, Serbia is a great team so their spikes and serves did things difficult for us. The same happened on the fifth set - we started well, then it got even and we were lucky they failed on the final track. Now we will give everything and do our job on the next games, it’s what we can do and we want to do.”
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Jovo Cakovic, Serbia coach: “Congratulations to Japan. They are very good in defence and for us it was the first match we fought at long points and played better. However, we were 14-13 on the final set and ended up losing 17-15, we knew who was going to spike on Japan but failed on defence on those decisive moments. We are not favourites here, so we must learn for this generation to improve.”
Mila Kocic, Serbia libero: “It was a really hard match today. All of us gave all we had, but I think Japan is really strong. They were really close to win the match in the third set, but then we showed the match finishes when the last ball goes down. It was a very good match, we proved we can play better than our previous games and I’m proud of that. I hope that we will take the ninth place now.”