Press release

London, Great Britain, August 9, 2012 – Clashing emotions in the mixed zone and the press conference after the match Brazil-Japan. Japan coach Masayoshi Manabe gave simple but effective explanations: "Today we lost. One of the main reasons was that normally we are quite good at serving, but today, every time we served, Brazil returned the ball back with a strong attack so we had no chance to attack back. We are disappointed. We were aiming to win this match, but now the match against Korea it is the only thing we want to think about."

His opponent Jose Zé Roberto Guimaraes commented how difficult was to gain a semifinal after a fourth place in the Pool: "I suffered a lot at the start. It was a question of adjusting the defence and from then on things got better. Tactically the team was very good, we were able to spike on the counter attack. We deserve this. Being given a chance of passing the semifinal, we now want gold. Now we play USA and we can do good things. In the Pool we suffered a lot with the USA's spikes. We now need to defend against them like we defended here today and then we will see. When we lost against USA and Korea and were almost knocked out, I felt like it was an embarrassment to our country. I think we really hit the bottom against Korea. That had to happen so that we would start helping ourselves. There's nothing worse than Brazil losing and having ended in between ninth and 12th (place)."

Brazil setter Danielle Lins was excited: "We are going to try and give 150% in the final. The team has been very united and has become stronger after the bad time we had. Now we want to finish with a gold medal."

Surrounded by journalist from Japan, Saori Kimura gave her statement: "Our service was received very well by Brazil. The variation of the attack wasn't wrong, but I believe the Japan team made errors and Brazil were good at blocking. We gave points to Brazil by doing that. We won't get to play in the final but we will still try and get a medal. We can enjoy it and play together."