Bulgaria's Branimir Grozdanov hits against Russia's block
Dallas, USA, July 2, 2016 - Russia dominated all aspects of the match against a young Bulgarian team. Both coaches admitted they were more concerned about Sunday's matches than Saturday's.
Plamen Konstantinov, coach of Bulgaria: We rested our normal starting six today to give the younger players a chance today because our game is tomorrow. We need to win tomorrow so we decided it’s better to save some energy for our starting six tomorrow and give the young guys a chance to play this game.
We lost 3-0, so we didn’t show our real potential today, I think, but it’s normal for young players that when they play for the first time against a team like Russia and they were maybe a little bit scared or nervous against such a big team, but I think this also is experience that they need to make the next step.
Vladimir Alekno, coach of Russia: [Our team winning two 3-0 matches] doesn’t mean anything because I consider these teams weaker than our team, so we just want to grow and to look at ourselves moving forward.
Viktor Yosifov, captain of Bulgaria: The third and first set we kept the advantage like yesterday and missed our chances. I think we need to be more confident later in the set. We are a very young team this year. There are a lot of young players here for the first time, and it’s a little bit stressful. They need to do this to learn (how to finish).
Sergey Tetyukhin, captain of Russia: This win is important for our confidence, but we have other goals in front of us. Everyone should participate in the game and get maximum practice out of it. But the most important game will be tomorrow, I am not worried about that.