Tokyo, Japan, September 22, 2015 - Stephane Antiga said Japan gave his Poland side a run for their money as they picked up a four set win to stay unbeaten going into the final day.
Poland coach Stephane Antiga: "It was really exciting to play the game against the host team. I was content to play in front of full and excited fans, but they made the game difficult. We had a match against USA yesterday and are going to have one against Italy tomorrow. Both teams are on top of the world, so a match today between them was really difficult and we needed good strategies to play against Japan. Japan played well and they are getting better and better during this tournament. Japan needs to make better receptions and they need center players with height and strong bodies."
Japan coach Masashi Nambu: "Poland is the No. 1 team so we tried to play our best and not play it safe. We lost but psychologically we were good. Our jump serve is good but our jump floater is not good enough. Sideout and good serves are necessary to be a better team. If we keep our good serves, we can play against high-level teams in the world. We also have to brush up on our jump floaters."
Poland captain Michal Kubiak: "It was nice to play against Japan in a place with a lot of supporters. We started pretty bad, which is normal for us. But we came back and it was pretty good. Tomorrow we are going to play early in the morning against the best team, so we are going to be prepared and try to win."
Poland player Bartosz Kurek: "We thought it would be pretty tough and it was actually. We were prepared but started pretty bad. After today's match we got good inspiration for tomorrow. We are going to play against the best team tomorrow, so we want to win and be qualified for the Olympics."
Japan captain Kunihiro Shimizu: "We tried to play as aggressive as possible from the beginning, which worked well today. We were able to take the first set and put pressure on Poland. But the remaining sets, our concentration for services and serve reception got bad. I think that's the reason why we lost this game. Being able to play such a close match against the world's No. 1 team gave us great confidence."
Japan player Yuki Ishikawa: "It was good that we were able to play a close game like today, but it is regretful that we weren't able to do our best especially in the second set. From the second set, our service reception got bad, which we need to improve."
Japan player Masahiro Yanagida: We were able to play better in the beginning than yesterday, and we were able to win the first set. The other sets were close, but our defense didn't work well, and our plays after the bad receptions was not good.