France finishes first week of 2012 FIVB World with surprising results – Volleyball news
France, which was regarded as an average team, turned many heads around with brilliant performance in the first week of 2012 FIVB World League, which completed its run from May 18-20.
France opened the tournament in Pool C alongside teams from USA, hosts Italy, and Korea. Italian city Florence provided the backdrop for the first leg of preliminaries. At the end of the first segment, France bagged five points after winning two out of three
matches.
“Les Bleus” of France defeated the American team in the first match on Friday. Next up, French went against tough contender Italy in the second match but dropped the decision. Again in the third match, France demonstrated stellar performance and held off
Korea for 3-2 (25-18, 24-26, 25-20, 21-25, 15-11) victory.
Park Chul-Woo of Korea topped all the scorers with match-high 23 points. France was supported by Samuele Tuia, who registered 19 points. Beside him, three more French players went into double-digit score.
In the first set of the match, French team benefitted from the solid blocks. Korean spikers hit from many different angles but most of their efforts went futile. French triple-blocks enabled the team to keep the Koreans behind the attack line. In the meantime,
France produced quality shots and took the score by storm. First set came to close at 25-18, while French side was tagged successful.
Raged-up Koreans played to their full potential in the following set. They jumped on every little opportunity to score points and threw everything in attack. The French fought bravely but dropped the second set with narrow margin of two points, 24-26.
After the tie of scores at the end of second set, a heated competition was likely to happen in the next frame. Both teams stayed incredibly close on the scoreboard. Nevertheless, France took the lead and finished the set 25-20.
Korea responded in fourth set and managed to create the deadlock of 2-2. It was a great comeback by the Korean team but they failed to produce a winning performance in the final set of the match. France proved to be better and settled for victory.
Park Ki-Won, the Korean coach, appreciated the effort of his players. He did not complain about his players’ performance but put the blame on too many injuries that occurred and affected the performance of his team. Philippe Blain, France coach said, “During
this round we felt good vibrations that will help us to face the next Qualification Olympic Tournament in fine shape.”
However, the Korean Captain Kwon Young-Min seemed totally disgruntled as he believed the team performed well in all three matches but failed to clinch success.
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