MATCH INFO

Kagoshima, Japan, November 22, 2011 - Egypt picked up its first win of this FIVB World Cup against China on Tuesday; an inspired win considering the political turmoil facing their nation at home in recent days. Coach Sherif Elshemerly explained that the teams thoughts are with his people back home, and dedicated the victory to them.

Egypt coach Sherif El-Shemerly: At first I would like to express my deep happiness that we won our first match. It is a very tough and high-level competition. For me as head coach it’s the first win in the World Cup at height of international competition. We beat a strong team, ranked higher than us, so it’s a great victory for us. We respect the China team very much, and we played them thinking beating a big, famous team. This victory is a gift to the Egyptian people facing political problems now, it’s not stable. I hope they understand that we are thinking about them. I expect that in the next match we will be even better. Today is the first step to our target, and I hope to continue and to win.

On Ahmed Abdelhay: About Salah I think he is one of the best in the world from my point of view. He loves to play in Japan. When we have a big championship here, he prepares well because he loves it here and they [the fans] love him. He always wants to give a good impression to the spectators.

Egypt captain Ashraf Abouelhassan: I’m very happy that we won our first match today. As I said before in the first press conference, we will start to perform better step by step. We started to play better versus Brazil at the end of match, and today we won our first match of these championships. Today the match was, like every match, very difficult for us. But we prepared better and worked well yesterday, and in the meeting we started to discuss the weaknesses and strengths of the of China team.

China coach Zhou Jianan: Today’s match was not a good one, and before the match we were nervous. Because yesterday was an evening match we didn’t have much time to prepare for today. We still have to think about how to deal with such difficult situations.

China captain Cui Jianjun: First I want to say that we prepared well for today’s match, but we just lacked power on the floor.

Chen Ping: First I want to congratulation Egypt on victory. We just couldn’t get relaxed during this match. Mentally we were a little nervous, but after the USA match we had a meeting and the coach addressed the mental side of things. We are getting better day by day but still are not at our best.