Player Yusuke Ishijima, who finished the match with 12 points, expressed his appreciation during the post-game press conference for the hometown lift.
"I'd like to thank the people of Nagano, we played at our maximum level, and I'd like to thank those people for cheering us," he said. "Tomorrow I hope we can do our best as challengers for the world league 2011."
His captain Kota Yamamura didn't play today, but was extremely pleased with his team's showing: "I could see the accomplishment of our hard training," he noted. "We hit very hard, and I'm convinced that we were successful in our training."
Coach Tatsuya Ueta was equally satisfied. "I have a new team,but we won this match anyway today," he remarked. "Our training paid off, and I'm very happy at this moment. We will do our best tomorrow as well." He complimented his new libero Takeshi Nagano, noting that he gives the team a stable combination of reception and power. He went on to add that the team's leading scorer on the day, Kunihiro Shimizu, "played tremendously".
Mohamed Ben Slimen, the captain of the visiting Tunisian team, noted that his team had only a short time to prepare leading up to this showdown with Japan.
"This match was very hard for us because we had just started our preparation. We came here to play, and we knew it would be difficult to win against Japan here," he stated. "We lost today, but maybe tomorrow we can win. We will go to work and come back better next time."
The Tunisia coach, Mkaouar Fethi underscored his captain's sentiments: "Our team is a new team, a young team. There was not enough time to prepare." He added "My players are very tired, we are doing a lot of work. We started working in June 2010, [that's] only 2 months and a half. I hope tomorrow you will see a better, fresher team than today."
Coach Fehti made clear that his is a developing team that will only get better in the next few years.
"in 1995 I came with the last team of Tunisia, and we lost against everyone 3-1, 3-0… Our average age was the same. 12 years later, the same team came and beat Japan in 2007. We lost now because we are young and inexperienced. We will have a very good team after 4 or 5 years."
The second match between these two teams is scheduled for tomorrow, August 18, at 09:00 GMT.
Argentina
Brazil
Bulgaria
Cuba
Finland
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Korea
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Russia
Serbia
USA
