Serbian captain highlights his team work to qualify to the Final Six
Cordoba, Argentina, June, 17, 2017 - Serbia may have qualified for the Final Six, but Argentina didn't make life easy for them in Cordoba, pushing them to five sets (25-22, 19-25, 25-22, 28-30, 15-12). Serbia coach Nikola Grbic had warned his players it was likely to be a tough game.
Nikola Grbic, Serbia Head Coach: I told my players not to expect the same performance from Argentina as the one they showed in Iran. We never stopped playing; whenever we lifted our guard, they were there. They were aggressive in defence, which kept them alive. I always like to say that the thermometer of a team is the defence, and they did it very well, supported by their public. I’m glad we came back in the fifth even though we had a match point in the fourth.
Marko Podrascanin, Serbia captain: I feel really proud of my team because I'm for the first time the captain and it's a great honour for me to be in one of the best teams of the world with a great history of volleyball. This is a great result for us because we changed a lot from last year and we reacted very well to that and we won a really important game. Our mentality is to play really tough every game. We play to get the victory, so also against Bulgaria we will try to do our best and win the game. Argentina played much better than the last time in Tehran, especially with De Cecco. They played faster and we needed to be our best to win the game.
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Julio Velasco, Argentina Head Coach: It was great match for us. I regret not having a good start in the fifth, we started playing late and we couldn’t catch them. We played a really good match, taking into account that Martin Ramos is not usually playing as opposite, we suffered the injury of Nicolas Bruno and we have a lot more injured players. Nevertheless, the team never stopped playing; that is a huge satisfaction.
Luciano De Cecco, Argentina captain: I think we did a very good match and that my presence on the team didn't affect the work because we all played well. On some things we improved and in others we still need to do it, but we forced the tie break against a great team. Serbia got the benefit of its experience to play in high level and it was difficult for us to play the fifth set. We want to thank the fans who came to cheer for us. There were a lot of people today and we hope tomorrow it gets even better.
