Hiroshima, Japan, October 10, 2019 - Poland eased to their fourth consecutive win at the 2019 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Cup on Thursday, beating Egypt 3-0 (25-19, 25-18, 25-16) off the back of 15 points from Artur Szalpuk at Hiroshima Green Arena.
Poland coach Vital Heynen: “Of course I’m satisfied. We changed a lot of players compared to yesterday. We want a lot of players to play, we won - which I think is the most important thing - and in this tournament we have a new match every day, so now it’s on to the new match tomorrow.”
Poland captain Michal Kubiak: “First of all, thank you to the fans who came out today. We really appreciate every one of you and are happy that we won. Our journey in this competition is not over yet, we still have to fight to win this tournament as that is what we came here for, and we will do our best to achieve our goal.”
On the changes to the team: “I don’t know. There is the coach to speak about changes in the team. For me everything is the same. The players are changing but our level is still high. For me as the captain this is the most important thing. Everybody is healthy - except (Bartosz) Kurek, but he’s healthy now, he had a really big surgery and now he’s alright - and we are happy to be here all as a team and we are happy to all play together.”
Egypt coach Gido Vermeulen: “First of all I want to congratulate the Polish team and my friend Vital (Poland head coach Vital Heynen) for a great game. We learned a lot. We know they play very stable volleyball and we tried to go on with them in defence and try out some other players like Poland did. So it was a good lesson for us, learning the defence and the tipping game from them. We tried to copy them - sometimes it succeeded and sometimes it didn’t - but I think our players had some fun playing, and we will prepare again for tomorrow. We have Japan, so we will focus from now on that game and take our lessons from Poland.”
Egypt player Rashad Atia: “I think today we started the match well, but in the middle and towards the end we lost our concentration. We were playing against Poland, who are one of the strongest teams in volleyball, and I think we will learn from our mistakes. Our next match against Japan and it is important to win. The team that wins in this competition is the one that keeps their concentration for the whole time.”