Lina Alsmeier, of Germany, spikes to break the blocks of Daima Del Rio Preval and Thalia Moreno Reyes of Cuba.
Santa Fe, Argentina, August 19 2017 - Germany showed a very strong condition to recover from a 1-2 temporary deficit against Cuba by showing a resilient attitude to fight for every point.
Despite some moments of adversity, Lina Alsmeier remarked that her team kept the faith and tried to getaway from desperation by just having fun and play.
Lina Alsmeier, Player of Germany: “We had a little down in the second and third set, but we came up and our game was very good. We have faith and we also had fun, I think that's important. Yesterday we couldn't play our game against Argentina, but today we did it so I'm so happy.”
Martin Watne Fryndes, Assistant Coach of Germany: “We're happy because we get the victory against a difficult rival as Cuba, that plays really simple, but very well also. As soon as we could sort out their system, we played efficiently on our transition and were able to keep them under pressure. The key today was our serve, we were able to keep them out of their plans, so we could make our play in block and defense. It was an important victory for us because we want to advance to the round of sixteen.”
Elizabeth Vicet Campos, Captain of Cuba: “We played a very good game, but we failed too many times, specially from the service line. We lost the initiative on serve and also we failed to close the set in the fourth period. We committed mistakes after the point number 20, we need to play with more faith in ourselves. Our team has a lot of unity and we know we will improve because we want to qualify to the next stage.”
Tomas Fernandez Arte, Head Coach of Cuba: “We were very nervous. This was the first game for many of our players and they felt the pressure of getting the victory. We committed too many mistakes in the fundamentals in which we're best: block, service and attack. The nervousness betrayed us, but we have a lot of potential and we want to get into playoffs.”