We are working very hard says Cuba coach

Cuba endured the challenge of Egypt and emerged with Saturday’s tie-break win (26-24, 25-20, 21-25, 20-25, 15-9) in Pool B of the FIVB Volleyball Men’s U21 World Championship in Isa Sport City.

Cuba coach Jesus Angel Cruz: “I am quite sad because we can only play for ninth place. We had good motivation in the first two sets, and the other two, we had problems. We were rather anemic and very slow to react. We needed to bring back the motivation to the game.

“We are working very hard in Cuba until this very moment.

“We have to keep thinking we can win our remaining matches. We have to enter the court to win the game.”

Cuba player Jose Carlos Romero: “We gave them (Egypt) much pressure by making our service difficult to receive. We had moments that we were slowed down, but we had to wake up at some point.”

Egypt coach Hossameldin Eissawy: “My players did better today, but we still made some mistakes. We tried to improve.

"I thought my players performed better than the other team. They could do a lot of things inside the game and inside the court. I just hope to win the next match.”

Egypt player Youssef Hamdy Awad: “It’s hard to come back from two sets down, but even so, we played well, in fact, much better than yesterday and against Argentina during the first day. We will fight to finish in the best place possible.

“In the World Championship, you can gain more experience when you play against different teams from different continents.”