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I'm happy we managed our goal: Kolakovic
Iran captain Alireza Nadi and coach Julio Velasco together with Serbia coach Igor Kolakovic
Serbia coach Igor Kolakovic: I’m happy because we managed our great goal, which is the Olympic Games. We played against a very good Iran team, and it was tough, especially in the first two sets. But we had patience and will and did everything for the win and I am very satisfied with the victory.
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(Re. serve mistakes): We are a team that doesn’t have a strong service. Sometimes, it’s good to have a strong serve, but we play technically with good defence and a good block and counterattack. The strong point of our team is defence, not service.
Serbia captain Bojan Janic:
Happy about the victory and now we are qualified for the Olympics. We came here to win all of the games and now we are almost there, so I think it could be a perfect tournament for us. Today, Iran played very well and it was not easy for us to get the win, but I think we deserve to be in top place in this tournament.
Iran coach Julio Velasco:
First, I want to congratulate Serbia for their victory and qualification for the Olympic Games. They demonstrated they are the best team in this competition and one of the best teams in the world. I asked my players to continue to play even when Serbia were playing well. We did that for most of the game, except for the last part of the first and second sets. It wasn’t only down to our mistakes, but also the very good action of the Serbia team; that’s why they are Serbia. We have to learn from them and play the important moments with a clear mind. But I can say my team has improved and we are playing good volleyball.
Tomorrow, we play Japan and we must play a good match against them. In a tournament, a team has to learn to forget defeats; only they must learn from the defeats. They must learn technical, tactical and specific situations to do better in the match. But within half an hour, they must forget (the previous) match. Tomorrow, it’s a different team with different characteristics in front of a lot of people. It’s another situation. So we must change immediately the image of the game. If we think about this (defeat), we will not be ready tomorrow.
Iran captain Alireza Nadi: First of all, congratulations to the Serbia team; they played very well. We also played very well and all our players did their best on the court. We just lost two close sets on a couple of individual errors, but I think we played great. We know Serbia has a lot of experience and that helped then in the close situations.
Iran No. 6 Mohammad Mousavi: We were ready to play 120 per cent. During the game, it was always close but we lost on a few mistakes. In the last set, we were a little down psychologically. Our coach told us to keep going point by point. We did that in the first two sets, but we lost concentration in the third set.
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