Beijing Olympic gold medalists Brazil edged past Japan to set up a final against defending champions Russia in the women’s volleyball World Championship yesterday.
Brazil had to come back from two sets down before scoring a 22-25, 33-35, 25-22, 25-22, 15-11 victory in 2 hours, 20 minutes in the last match of the day.
The Russians, also five-time winners as the former Soviet Union, scored a 25-16, 13-25, 25-19, 25-21 victory over Beijing Olympic silver medalists the US in the semi-finals.
Photo: EPA
“I’m not totally pleased with the quality of our game today. Today’s game was more about mental toughness than technical skill. We didn’t really change our overall strategy. That’s why we won,” Russia coach Vladimir Kuzyutkin said.
“Like the last 10 matches, we will stay with our strategies and try to win,” he said. “We just have to stay focused on the match tomorrow.”
US coach Hugh McCutcheon said of Russia: “They were better than us today. From our end, I thought we tried to implement some plans and systems, but at the end of the day, the Russian team is quite physical.”
“They can do some things that other teams in the world cannot,” he said. “We struggled to stop them, but we couldn’t. We learned lessons from today. We will come back tomorrow and try to do the best we can.”
McCutcheon said the US women’s serves helped them take the second set, but Russia improved their receiving of serves in the remainder of the 93-minute match.
The US have never won the three major tournaments — the Olympics, the World Championship and the World Cup.
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