November 1, 2007: Hamamatsu Press Conference involving the coaches of the six teams at Site B.

Brazil: Jose Roberto Guimaraes
Cuba: Antonio Perdomo
Kenya: Sammy Kirongo
USA: Lang Ping
Poland: Marco Bonitta
Peru: Enio Figueiredo

General comments

Brazil: This World Cup is very difficult as we have 11 matches over two weeks and there are only three Olympic qualifying places up for grabs, but we will try our best.
Every team is a potential powerhouse or strong team and we know it is a long way over two weeks, but we don’t know what will happen once the game starts.
There is always the possibility to win.

Cuba: As the coach of Brazil said, I also think the World Cup games are difficult because all teams are of a high level and only the top three teams can get to Olympics.? We will do our best as much as all the other teams. We hope to promote volleyball through these games.

Kenya: We are very happy to be here representing Africa. The level of competition is very high and there are other teams that are much better than us. But we have come here and want to show people we are doing a good job and can play good volleyball. I know that only three teams will go to China for the Olympics, but I can say maybe we can be there.

Peru: As every coach has said, we know that this competition is a difficult competition, but we prepared well and trained well and will do our best to take a ticket to next summer’s Olympic Games.

Poland: As the other coaches have mentioned, we know this competition is long and difficult. We know there are strong teams, maybe better than us, but we will do our best. There is the possibility that we will win.

USA: I last played in a World Cup in 1981 and it was a very long tournament. I remember I hit over 1,000 balls. Everybody knows this is a hard, long tournament and teams have an equal opportunity to fight for the top three spots. We will try to play consistently and take any opportunity to win.
How do you approach a round-robin tournament with 11 games vs. a knockout tourney?

USA: You have an equal opportunity because everybody plays everybody else. It’s not like the World Championship.
Second, I think it was hard for us to prepare because we had just four days before coming to Japan because all the players had to fly back from different countries as they were overseas. So we didn’t have time to build up our condition and train.

Poland: This is 11 games over 15 long days and we’ve had to prepare to be in good condition for these games.

Peru: The game style between a single competition and a knockout competition is different. We know that we have to compete with each other in all these games so the? goal is to fight and play our best from the beginning. The results will depend on physical condition and we will know the answer when the final game is over.

Kenya: Playing many matches especially for teams coming from the other side of the world is very important to continue getting experience from the players and tactics of other countries. It is good for a country that is coming up; there will be some tough matches.

Cuba: Needless to say our game condition depends on rhythm; it doesn’t always depend on the trainer’s efforts. Unfortunately, we were affected by the Air France strike so couldn’t arrive on schedule. This delay will have a bad affect on the team, but we will do our best anyway.

Brazil: As mentioned, every team has their own condition and situation, but Cuba had a long time to prepare for these games. Teams including Brazil, Poland and the USA had many players who were in other countries so they had at most only 15 days to prepare. But all games will depend on team preparations.
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