The bottom-four of 2011 FIVB World League – Volleyball News (Part2)
Continued from part 1
Finland and France are also down with a shaky display of performance in the preliminary round-robin of the 2011 FIVB World League so far.
Finland
The Finnish Men’s National Volleyball Team is playing under the tag of Pool C in the tournament. Teams from Argentina, Serbia, and Portugal accompanied Finland in the pool. Finland opened the tournament last week and was featured in matches against Portugal.
The first match was a five-set thriller, which took many twists and turns. Finland staged a point-to-point fight but lost the opening match with a narrow margin of score. The success in the opening match boosted the morale of the other team, while Finland
could not perform up to the mark. The second match lasted for four sets and finally ended in Portugal’s favour. The first week didn’t bring any good luck for Finland.
The Argentinean born head coach of Team Finland, Castellani Danie, worked on his team and formulized a new plan for them in the second week. They saw certain improvement in the next match against Serbia. The Serbian team had a strong player-line and it had
competitors who are known for their wonderful skills. However, Finland’s team did not stress over the strong position of the Serbs and worked out a great performance. Finland broke the ice and finally scored its first set victory of the tournament against
Serbia in the second week.
The start of the second week was pretty good for the Finnish team but the resilient rival took the game to Finland in the following match. The volleys of the Serbs showered on Finland. As a result, Finland lost the match in three straight sets. The success
in the first match had created a little ray of hope for Finland but a wonderful performance by the Serbs in the second match didn’t allow Finland to move up on the ranking chart.
France
The silver-medallist team of the 2006 FIVB World League, France entered this year’s edition of the FIVB World League in Pool D. However, the French team is also regarded as a low-performance team at the 2011 FIVB World League. The French boys were challenged
by Italy in the first week matches. The Italian team put huge pressure on France’s team and pulled off success in both matches. Team France failed to put up with the strong competitors and staged a shaky performance. Italy made a clean sweep and didn’t lose
a single set.
France was challenged by the South Korean squad in the second week of the 2011 FIVB World League. France was generally predicted to do well against Korea but the team constantly remained in the blue corner. In the first match, France could only capture one
set out of four and acknowledged the better status of their opponents. It was the third consecutive loss that the French team had to suffer. There was enough to learn from the previous matches but the situation looked somewhat similar in the next match. France
and South Korea entered the centre with great plans. Team France was determined to finish the second-week on a good note. However, they couldn’t live-up to their dream as South Korea came strong onto the French side. Better attack and defence techniques enabled
South Korea to take away the second match from France. Ultimately, France could not get any points and finished the second-week in the same position.
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