Lodz, Poland, June 3, 2018 – Germany bounced back from their straight-set loss to France last Saturday by stopping Poland’s winning streak in a four-set battle at the FIVB Volleyball Nations League on Sunday.
Germany coach Andrea Giani: “We are going ahead step by step because there’s a big difference between my players now and then. When we push for a 100 per cent, it is easy to play like that. Last week I tried to push my players harder because it’s important to play on a high level. I tried to check different players and all my guys played well today. I am satisfied with the two victories here, but I have to remember about the straight-set loss yesterday.”
Germany captain Lukas Kampa: “We finally found the right approach for this kind of games at the Volleyball Nations League because we missed it in previous matches. We started to trust in ourselves. I don’t know why it happened today, maybe because it was the toughest game in front of a big crowd and against one of the strongest teams now in the competition. We made it, we accepted the situation and we started strong the very beginning.”
Poland coach Vital Heynen: “The first two sets were clearly for Germany. It took us too long before we had some good block and defence. They were spiking great from the beginning and we could not stop them. After that we put pressure on the serve. We took more risk and had some chances. It was a very close finish. Germany deserved this win because they took their chances.
“Anyone who thinks that we could win 15 matches in the Volleyball Nations League is wrong. Of course we would prefer to have six wins in six matches, but at this moment we have five wins out of six matches and it’s not a bad result. We can learn much more from these tight matches because they teach us a lot on how to play, on where we make a lot of mistakes and on what we can do about it. So it’s a very interesting match to look back at, much more than the others.”
Poland player Jakub Kochanowski: “Today we did not play well against the German team. At the moment I don’t want to get into details because there were a lot of things I didn’t see from the court. I can say that we gave our 100 per cent. What’s good for us is the fact that we lost this game in a moment when we still have time to improve it in training.”