Okayama, Japan, September 1, 2015 – China defeated Argentina 3-0 (25-14, 25-15, 25-20) on the eighth day of the FIVB World Cup at Momotaro Arena in Okayama on Tuesday.
China coach Lang Ping: Today we used many young players in order to give them more experience and match play, and to improve. In the third set, we had some fluctuations in our rhythm and how we played. We have a lot of lessons to learn from the third set and we must develop from this. I hope Argentina will do their best to get a berth for the Olympic Games. I’ve seen Argentina improve over the last two years and we can see how they have grown. In upcoming matches, I want to give all my players a chance to show what they can do. The most important thing is to keep the players in the best condition and stable. Whatever match it is, it’s all good experience for the players and they’ve had a good experience in Okayama. Finally, I would like to thank the Chinese fans here for cheering us on.
China captain Zeng Chunlei: I’m glad we were able to win the match and we won 3-0, so I’m happy. But Argentina’s defence was excellent and there are many things we can learn from them. Every match is important but we have to keep in mind to play all-out and in our own style. We’re only focusing playing the remaining games to the best of our ability.
Argentina coach Guillermo Orduna: At the start of the first set, we played very well and could maintain our rotation, but as the match progressed we made more errors, so after that it was hard to get back to our best level. China were very good, made few errors and their offence was very strong. It was obvious that our level of ability was quite different from China. We knew that before the match but it was tough to respond. But the team played with a positive attitude and that was a good thing. In order to play better against fast teams, we need to have more games with Asian teams such as China, Korea, Japan and Thailand. If we can do that, we will be able to grow as a team. We need to have the same kind of speed.
Argentina captain Emilce Sosa: We played against a very strong team today and it was a shock for us. It’s the first time in a long time that we’ve played against an Asian team and we found China so fast; we had a hard time dealing with that. And their serve was excellent, so it was hard for us to play as we normally do. We still have three games to go and they are all important so we want to play as well as we can with good teamwork. We would like to use our upcoming matches to try and get more experience. We know these games will be tough but we want to do our best to make our skills better and try to get better results than we have so far.