Coaches in Resistencia are ready and share ambitious goals
Resistencia, Argentina, August 13, 2015 - On the eve of another Boys' U19 World Championship in Argentina, the atmosphere is charged with excitement as the first serve approaches. With play scheduled to begin on Friday morning, coaches of Pool A and Pool B teams in Resistencia are ready to chase their dreams.
Home team Argentina is ready to welcome the teams of Belgium, France, Turkey and USA at Pool A in Alejo Gronda Hall, while Pool B will feature Cuba, China, Egypt, Italy and Mexico. All ten coaches shared their goals after the General Technical Meeting held in Resistencia on Thursday afternoon.
Luis Testa, Argentina coach: “Our goal is to be among the best six teams of the tournament. We have a squad that understands the game very well, the players know how to play and have good skills. We’re based on a good reception and attack, and we have a great potential in defence. Playing at home will encourage us to fight as hard as we can.”
Joel Banks, Belgium coach: “We’re looking forward to a great tournament, but every pool here is very difficult. There are a lot of quality teams. We will try to perform our best every time we get on court. We have a team with good spirit; the boys are encouraged to enjoy this experience, as this is a bonus for us. We want to show our best volleyball.”
Gu Jun, China coach: “Our first goal here is to study and learn the way other countries play. European teams and other teams play in a very different way than us. Second, we have to work fast due to our short training, as we worked for only three months before the tournament. We need to perfect our training.”
Jesús Cruz López, Cuba coach: “We want to make it among the best eight teams, but the first step is to qualify to the next round. On the qualification tournament, we were the second team behind USA with a good group of boys - that gives us good expectations.”
Emad Eldin Nawar, Egypt coach: “My team is the only one from our continent here, so we are very pleased because of that. We have some very difficult matches in Pool B with Mexico, Italy, China and Cuba. We would like to go to the second stage and make a good tournament, maybe we have good chances.”
Olivier Audabram, France coach: “Our team has changed for this tournament. We aim to do our best here. We will try to get a good placement at the first round and from then, we’ll see how far we can get. To play against the host team is always interesting - I think it will be a great match. They will have the crowd on their side, so it’s going to be a nice match to play.”
Mario Barbiero, Italy coach: “We want to do a good tournament. Ours is a team that had a good performance in the Continental Championship and even though World Championships are hard tournaments, we are a very strong squad and hope to do it well.”
Gabriela Alarcón, Mexico coach: “We want to play at our best. Obviously we will try to get among the best fourteen teams and we will go for that. If we can go further, welcome. As the only woman in the championship, I think this is not about gender, but work instead. In Mexico I work with men because I had good results that way, but here I’m not a woman, I’m just a coach as everyone else.”
Salih Erdogan Tavaci, Turkey coach: “We’re very happy to be here. We want to do our best on the group stage and then go step by step to reach the finals. We know we have to be very concentrated and play point by point to reach our best level on this competition. We have a difficult match on Friday against USA - we want to do the best on our first game and then continue that way.”
Ken Shibuya, USA coach: “We believe we have a very strong squad - maybe one of our strongest ever. We’re excited to see if we’re truly one of the best teams at this World Championship. We are also very pleased with Argentina as the host nation and the boys are getting along and ready to play.”