Best ever finish for Portugal
 Lausanne,
Swtizerland, July 6, 2005 – Portugal’s
fifth place finish in the 2005 World
League represents their best ever result
in the competition from six attempts.
The world number 18 played some
exceptional Volleyball under new coach
Orlando Samuels, making a substantial
improvement on their previous results
where they finished 10th in 1999 and
from 2001 -2004 recorded 13th, 13th,
13th and 10th place finishes.
Pic: Captain João Jose was Portugal's
leading star once again
In Pool A of the Intercontinental Round,
where defending champions and world
number one Brazil, in the end,
comfortably won the group and the ticket
to the final round, Portugal were one of
the surprise packages, recording their
best ever win-loss record (6-6),
finishing ahead of Venezuela (5-7) and
Japan (2-10) while also beating Brazil
for the first ever time in their history.
With captain João Jose leading from the
front, Portugal were a completely new
team from years gone by. At home they
were near on unbeatable winning five of
their six matches, while they managed to
pick up one away victory at Venezuela.
At the halfway stage of the competition
they were 5-1 including three successive
3-0 victories and despite two
disappointing defeats at the hands of
the previously winless Japanese side on
the final weekend, Portugal completed a
superb campaign.
This is illustrated in the Best Player
rankings of the Intercontinental Round
with Jose finishing as the Best Blocker,
Nuno Pinheiro this in the Best Setter
rankings, Hugo Gaspar fourth in the Best
Scorers and ninth in the Best Spikers,
Carlos Teixeira fifth in the Best
Receivers and sixth in the Best Diggers
and André Lopes seventh in the Best
Servers.
"Our team is more mature with better
tactics and technically," Samuels said
while José added; "We showed, once again,
that our team is improving and gaining
maturity." |
Competition Formula