Belgium to compete for spot in 9th place match: FIVB Men's Junior World Championship
The Japanese and the Belgians went head to head to get into the 9th place final of the FIVB Men's Junior World Championship. The match between the two sides took place on August 9th at the Caio Martins gymnasium in Niteroi, Brazil.
After the Belgians had made a clean sweep of their opponents, they were celebrating their entry into the 9th place final of the tournament.
The first set of the match saw the Belgians dominate most of the match as the Japanese were trying to get into their stride. The second set witnessed some improvement in the Japanese performance but it was not enough to bag a win. The third set of the match
saw the Japanese put in a half-hearted effort and the Belgians prevailed in sealing the deal at the following final set scores: 25-19, 25-22 and 25-18.
The Belgian coach, Steven Vanmedegael, expressed his feelings in the following manner at the press conference after the match: “Today we played well in the block and the service. It was important that we could stop Japan's No. 5. We knew Japan had a very
quick defence, so we had to play fast and hard. We could not give Japan the chance to rally. Tomorrow will be a difficult match against Germany. We know each other very well. If we can win that match, then we will be a little happy about this tournament."
On the other hand, the Japanese coach Noriaki Sako gave these statements: “As you can tell from the statistics, our service didn’t work well today. As Belgium is a high and fast team, our service had to be efficient. Japan has some specific characteristics,
where we insist on defence and work on the counterattack.”
The opening set of the match reached a tie early on at 5-5 but the Belgian side put on a 4-0 run to take a 9-5 lead. The Japanese tried closing in the gap but the Belgians kept running ahead all through the first set. Therefore, it was not a tough job for
the Belgian squad to secure a win at 25-19.
Building on the momentum generated by winning the first set of the game Belgium was able to reach the first technical time out at a 8-5 lead that they were able to improve to 13-10. However, the Japanese did not give up and brought the score close to 18-17
but the Belgians did not relinquish the advantage and bagged a win at 25-22.
The third set saw the Belgians take the lead at 11-3 from which the Japanese never recovered and Belgium sailed smoothly towards a final set win at 25-18.
Belgium will be competing with the Germans for the 9th position in the tournament.
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