Defending Asian champions Japan overcame a sturdy challenge from young Italy to edge out past the host side in hard-fought five-set thriller in the 2021 FIVB Women’s Volleyball Nations League in Rimini, Italy on Tuesday.
Holding a two-set advantage 27-25, 25-19, Japan lost their rhythm, allowing the Italians attacking opportunities in the next two sets. As the host side starved off an attempted comeback, Japan regrouped and staged a gallant fightback, but their determined efforts were to no avail. Italy stole the show to clinch the third and fourth sets 25-16, 25-21, forcing a do-or-die tie-breaker.
In the thrilling decider, Sarina Koga and Mayu Ishikawa remained the backbone of Japan as both spearheaded their majority of the team’s attacks to help Japan narrowly beat Italy 15-13.
Four players scored double digits for Japan, with Sarina Koga chipping in with 23 points and Mayu Ishikawa adding 20. Erika Shinomiya and Ai Kurogo also joined the team’s dominant forces as both distributed 16 and 15 points respectively.
Anastasia Guerra emerged as the match’s top scorer with 26 points for Italy, while Sylvia Chinelo Nwakalor handed the team 24 points.
Italy’s Anastasia Guerra said at the virtual mixed zone: “We are a young team, so I think it’s normal that we try to grow in every match. So we started – in my opinion – to be something, to become a team. We have to be patient and improve match by match. We need to work a lot, stay together and don’t give up. We are a young group so we can build our strength and do something new every time. We need patience and continue to keep pushing until the end. Our team spirit is super important, because we didn’t have a lot of time to build this team, so I believe that our behaviour on the court is essential.”
Sarina Koga of Japan said: “In the first and second sets we played well, then in the third and fourth part we made many unforced errors, so we played a tie-break. We had to improve our game. Italy are a young team, they had more power than us and we had to be more careful. In the fifth set we thought only that we had to win this match, it was our mental strength. Yesterday we lost against Brazil in straight sets, so we had a meeting and we said to ourselves that we cannot lose today, so this is a very important win for us.”
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