Tokyo, Japan, September 23, 2015 – Canada beat Tunisia 3-0 (25-19, 25-21, 25-17) in the FIVB Men’s World Cup at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium on Wednesday.
Canada coach Glenn Hoag: I’m very happy with the win and to close this World Cup on a positive note. I think we lacked a bit of preparation so we could have done better against the stronger teams. But that’s for the future. For now, we will focus on the NORCECA tournament next week, which is an important tournament for us. Tunisia didn’t have some key players in this tournament and also at the end of the tournament I think they were tired as well. In the first set, Tunisia’s defence was good but Canada’s defence and blocking were also good, and we didn’t make many mistakes.
Canada captain Frederic Winters: Today was a very good match for us. I think we played really well in all aspects. Obviously I think finishing in seventh place is OK for us. The guys on our team would have liked to have played better against the stronger teams, but hopefully we’ll get another chance in the Olympics. Next, our focus is on qualifying for Rio.
Tunisia coach Fathi Mkaouar: We weren’t able to win today but we tried to be stronger mentally and to play better, but Canada were highly motivated and played very well. I don’t want to say we were unfortunate in this tournament but I think we had chances to win in the matches against Venezuela and Egypt. Now we just want to change our minds to focus on the upcoming qualifiers for the Olympics. We have learned a lot in this tournament. We learned that our service isn’t very good and our centre-setter combination doesn’t work very well either. We have some good players who played well in African tournaments but couldn’t play in this tournament. Hopefully, they will recover and come back and we will prepare to play in the Rio qualifiers.
Tunisia captain Marouen Garci: Today, Canada played very well and I have to say deserved to win the match. We didn’t block well and our defence wasn’t so good so we’re not happy about losing. But I wish the best for both Canada and my team and hope we can play better in the future.