Sapporo, Japan, September 29, 2018 – Italy breezed past Bulgaria 3-0 (25-15, 25-19, 25-22) in the first match of the FIVB Women’s World Championship at Hokkaido Prefectural Sports Center on Saturday and Italy’s captain was pleased with their opening performance.
Italy captain Cristina Chirichella: It was a very good game for us today although we were a bit nervous because it was the first match, but our block and defence were good. Now, we can relax a bit more ahead of our second game.
Italy coach Davide Mazzanti: It was our first game and our defence was good today, but in the second and third sets our attack was a bit weak, while our opponents defended well.
Bulgaria captain Hristina Ruseva: For sure, it was not our day today. I hope we can forget about this game because we need to move on and play with self-confidence as normal. Our team is very young so I don’t want this to be a situation where we move back and we don’t move forward. In the next game, I hope we show our true selves, with courage and heart as normal.
Bulgaria coach Ivan Petkov: Congratulations to Italy; they played a good match against us. For us, we didn’t play so good. We gave Italy too much respect. We are young but we must play aggressively and think about our potential. Today, I’m not sure we did that but I hope for our next matches we can show everybody our potential.