Hosts Estonia, Greece, Qatar and Venezuela ready for action in World League Pool D3

The four team coaches spoke at a press conference before this weekend's matches.

Hosts Estonia enter the tournament on the back of two victories in Montenegro last week.

Estonian coach Gheorghe Cretu said: "As in first tournament my goal is to give playing time to as many players as possible. Our second unit also needs to feel this kind of tension when they play in high level competition. They have a lot of potential and we work towards that - they can prove it in this kind of game." 

The hosts' first game will be against Qatar, who earned a 3-0 victory over Greece a week ago. They are in eighth place after the opening week.



Qatar coach Massimiliano Giaccardi said: "The World League is quite a discovery for us because we didn´t play any friendly games before the tournament. Our overall goal is to play better and better in every game. In the first tournament we had problems keeping our playing level more than two sets. So we had to recover our mental energy and repair some tactical things. Regarding the upcoming matches, we know Estonia has a strong team but I hope we can challenge with Greece and Venezuela. Our goal is to make them play. In the match against Spain a week ago, the opponent had to use their starting six to defeat us and this was a recognition for us." 

Just behind Qatar in the standings is Venezuela who missed their first match against Austria but then defeated Kazakhstan 3-1 and lost to Germany by the same score.


Venezuela coach Ronald Sarti said: "Our principle is to improve every game as a team and also rise the individual level of our players. Compared to the previous week I feel that my team is in better condition at the moment."

Greece is one of three teams who failed to get a victory in the first week of World League Group 3 action.

Greece coach Konstantinos Arseniadis said: "In the past weeks many of our players have battled with injuries and because of that we had to bring some new guys to the World League matches. Also in the last week our only opposite got injured and therefore we traveled to Tallinn with only 11 players and without a clear opposite. With this young group of players we will try our best and also we have some special points we want to correct in our tactics."