World champions Brazil brushed aside Bulgaria in three sets yesterday at the men's Volleyball World Cup.
Samuel Fuchs and Gustavo Endres scored 14 points each, while Andre Luiz da Nascimento and Dange Guimaraes Amaral earned 10 points a piece to lead Brazil to a 25-14, 25-21, 25-19 victory in Toyama, Japan.
Brazilian coach Bernardo Resende said the Bulgarians were tired after losing to the US in a five-set match on Thursday.
PHOTO: AFP
"We were able to control the game better than they did. We still have pressure to keep going, but we played with the right attitude today, fighting for every ball," Resende said.
"Now we need to think about our next match against Australia. They are a very tall team and we always have problems against tall teams," he said.
"We must try to see what we can do next," Bulgarian coach Martin Stoev said after his team's two recent losses.
"We must think that the tournament is starting again and we need to play well until the last game," he said.
Bulgaria were one of the pre-tournament favorites alongside Brazil and Russia, and all three currently sit in the top three places after five games.
The top three finishers in the 12-team round robin competition qualify for the Beijing Olympics next year.
Also in Toyama, Puerto Rico swept past European champions Spain 25-18, 25-22, 25-18 , while the US beat African champions Egypt 25-22, 25-18, 25-19 .
In Hiroshima, Athens Olympic bronze medalists Russia whipped hosts Japan 25-19, 25-20, 25-23 for a fifth straight win, moving them closer to a berth at next year's Olympics in Beijing.
Asian bronze medalists South Korea posted their long-awaited first win when they defeated Tunisia 25-17, 23-25, 21-25, 25-22, 15-9 , while Argentina downed Asian champions Australia 25-21, 21-25, 25-14, 25-23 .
"We won because my players kept their concentration throughout the game and my players had more passion and fighting spirit than Tunisia," South Korea coach Yoo Jung-tak said.
Meanwhile, Australia coach Russell Borgeaud said his young squad has had its fair share of ups and downs during the tournament so far.
"We are disappointed to lose the match, but probably like Argentina, we are a pretty young team with a couple of senior, older players," Borgeaud said.
"Argentina played some very good volleyball and were able to counter our attacks and rely on a couple of players at critical times such as [Marcos] Milinkovic and [Guillermo] Garcia, who were excellent as well," he said.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS