We can fight for victory against anybody - Giampaolo Medei

Opole, Poland, December 13, 2017 - Cucine Lube Civitanova's thrilling five-set win over hosts SAKSA Kedzierzyn-Kozle brings the Italian champions within touching distance of the semifinals at the 2017 FIVB Men's Club World Championship - obviously leaving coach and captain of winners quite satisfied.

Giampaolo Medei, Cucine Lube Civitanova Coach: "This was an amazing match for the fans, for the crowd. Maybe not so much for the coach, but, nevertheless, congratulations to Andrea and the team, it was a good match, and I expected this would be a good match. Yesterday we played a very high level volleyball, but you can't play like this all the time. Today's opponent had very good defence, with a lot of spikes in the same area, but my team didn't give up. You can see the difference was 2 points, so you can see how difficult this tournament is. What's important is that we won the match, maybe it wasn't the best volleyball on our part, but it was an important match for us mentally. Tomorrow, we also play a very hard match, but our team can be sure that we can fight anybody even when we're not playing at our best – we can fight for victory against anybody."

Micah Christenson, Cucine Lube Civitanova acting Captain: "For sure, we are very happy about the result. We knew coming here that ZAKSA are very strong, and it was a very good match. There were many technical moments throughout the match, but we served pretty well. We can play better than today, but we are happy about the result, because ZAKSA are a very good team."

Andrea Gardini, ZAKSA Kedzierzyn-Kozle Coach: "First I want to congratulate my friend for a good match, we played some high-level volleyball. Lube controlled the service, but I'm really happy comparing our play today to yesterday. It was much better. We played our style of volleyball, we used our middle blockers a lot, fast balls in the middle, which we didn't see yesterday. It's always difficult to play against such an opponent, they put a lot of pressure on us with players like Sokolov and Juantorena. Patience was the key."

Benjamin Toniutti, ZAKSA Kedzierzyn-Kozle Captain: "First let me congratulate Civitanova. I think this was a very nice game, good match. We are proud of the way we played, we were much better than yesterday, but Civitanova is one of the best teams in the world. They put a lot of pressure on us through their service, which made a lot of difference."



Quick links - Volleyball:
FIVB Volleyball Men's Club World Championship 2017
FIVB Volleyball Men's Club World Championship 2017 - Schedule
FIVB Volleyball Men's Club World Championship 2017 - Teams
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