Brazil retain title with easy win over Cuba
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Brazil's players celebrate their victory during the awarding ceremony after winning the Volleyball World Championships final match against Cuba in Rome's Palalottomatica, Italy, Oct. 10, 2010. Brazil's team won the World Volleyball Championships for the third time in a row as they beat Cuba 3-0. [Xinhua/Chen Haitong] |
Brazil captured their third consecutive men's world volleyball championship after beating Cuba in straight sets on Sunday.
The final, touted as the old versus the young, experience versus physical strength, talents versus talents, turned out like a practice game for Brazil, who overwhelmed the young Cuban team to retain their title in style with a 25-22, 25-14, 25-22 victory.
Brazil's Leandero Vissott scored a match-high 19 points, converting 57 percent of his attacks into points. Amaral added eight points to the victory. Bruno set Brazil to a 54 percent conversion rate on attacks, as the team had just 11 hitting miscues.
Cuba were paced by Leon's 15 points, while Leal added nine in the defeat. Brazil held an 8-4 advantage in blocks and took advantage of 27 Cuban errors.
"Today's match was our worst in the tournament, we couldn't do anything," said Cuba's captain Robertlandy Simon. "We tried to serve harder and that didn't work. Brazil played great."
Cuba's coach Orlando Samuel Coach blamed his side's loss on tiredness.
"The team was tired and we didn't recover from last night," he said.
"We have played four matches of five sets and that's a lot. But I am very happy and proud of my team. We went over all of our expectations and goals," he added.
Brazil made their job half done as they enjoyed rather easy start in the first and second set. They raced to a 5-2 lead in the first set, and a 7-1 lead in the second, which turned out to be unassailable for the worn-out Cubans.
In the third set, Cuba managed to hold on, but when the scored was tied at 12-12, Brazil pulled away with a 5-1 run, and Brazil could not narrow the gap until the end.
"We have played a great match against a great squad. I am very happy about how our team reacted and the strong performance from Visotto," said Brazil's legendary head coach Bernardo Rezende.
"We took command of the match from the beginning by imposing our rhythm. With this victory we are now tied with Italy that has also collected three world titles, and who in the past have been our role model," he added.
Italy disappointed again as they lost to Seriba 25-21, 25-20, 26-28, 25-19 for the bronze medal.
"It is very difficult to end a dream this way but we couldn't play better," said Italy captain Valerio Vermiglio.
"The match against Serbia was characterized by many ups and downs, and I think we did better than sufficient in this tournament and experienced a jump in quality," he said.
