Russia delight home crowd with 3-0 victory over Belgium
Kaliningrad, Russia, June 11, 2016 - Home favourites, Russia, extend their impressive FIVB World Grand Prix record with an easy win over Belgium in Kaliningrad on Saturday.
Yury Marichev, Russia, coach: Although we won 3-0, I can’t say that was an easy game for us. Team Belgium has a good service and reception. And from time to time they made us nervous. We have to work a lot on every part of the teamplay as we are not ready yet to oppose the best teams.
Ekaterina Pankova, Russia, captain: I don’t think that one should estimate us watching the game against Belgium. Despite the fact that they have a nice team, all the problems that we suffered were of our own. We have to move on in the team job and I hope that from match to match we would perform better.
Natalia Goncharova, Russia, player: We didn't expect Belgium reserve players to take part in the match tonight. It gave all our players a chance to show their skills. It will be more interesting and more difficult to play tomorrow against Turkey.
Gert Vande Broek, Belgium, coach: We tried to do something tonight although we knew we played against a top level team. We played the first set really well. They started to understand what we were doing in the second set, so we couldn't surprise them anymore. We learnt a lot of things tonight, it was a good experince for us.
Charlotte Leys, Belgium, captain: Russia played a very good game tonight while we tried to figure out a new system and a new younger team. We try to stay positive and hopefully we will play better tomorrow.