Brazil win eighth World League crown
Eurosport - Mon, 27 Jul 11:53:00 2009
Brazil made up for last year's Olympic heartbreak by beating Serbia 3-2 to seal their eighth World League title in Xinhua.
The Brazilians are now tied with Italy as the FIVB tournament's greatest champions. Between them the two nations have won 16 of the 19 editions of the competitions since its inception in 1990, following their 22-25, 25-23, 25-22, 23-25 and 15-12 victory.
The win in China saw the Brazil team go one better than a year ago in Beijing, where they lost the Olympic final to USA.
Brazil head coach Bernardo Rezende said: "It's a lot of joy. For us it is good to come up here and win, since we didn't play so well in Brazil and lost the title last year.
"I think that this generation still make a lots of mistakes. I hope they will learn from this competition and we will keep working and try to keep being competitive, that's our goal for this cycle."
Neves Vissoto was the game's highest scorer, racking up 29 points to spur his team on to victory, whole Murilo Endres and Lucas Saatkamp both contributed 15 points each.
"We are very sad for not winning in front of this wonderful crowd and because we didn't bring joy to the whole nation," said Serbia head coach Igor Kolakovic. "During the fifth set, it seemed like we could win this match, but they played even better and defended a lot of hard balls."
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Comment 1 - 4 of 4
go Brasil...the best
What a great match! I saw it on TV, enjoyed every bit of it. Honour to Serbia, who managed to stay in the game till the very end. Any other team would've been browbeaten by such a great Brazilian side. By the way, did anyone notice what happened towards the end of the 4th set, when a Brazilian ball was first given out then ruled "in" after vision of Tv footing? How about introducing a TMO also in football? And then, how brave the Serbs not to lose morale after the overrule! The score was 20-19 to Serbia, could've been 21-19, Brazil tied it at twenty each, could've gone on to win the set but the Serbs ended up taking it. Well done indeed Serbia. And well done Brazil too, for coming out on top.
I was in Arena!!! Great match, great atmosphere!!!
This match was held in Belgarde Arena in Serbia in front of record braking 250 000 000 people! 22 500 were in the arena watching the match live and that is absolut world record when it comes to views of any kind of volleyball match, it was even bigger than the Olympics!
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