Kunshan, China, July 07, 2017 – A strong blocking performance from Wang Yuanyuan and an even spread of scorers has helped the Rio 2016 Olympic Games champions China beat Italy 3-1 (25-20, 20-25, 25-23, 25-20) in their opening Group 1 FIVB World Grand Prix 2017 match.
Wang scored four points off the block and a total of eight points, while Gong Xiangyu scored 13 and Liu Xiaotong scored 12 as China consigned Italy to an opening-game loss for their third successive World Grand Prix campaign. Italy’s Indre Sorokaite was the leading scorer for the match with 14 points.
An Jiajie, China coach: “Winning is a good thing. In the first set both teams were nervous. Italy made some adjustments before us. I have to say that Italian players are very experienced, our team members are all young, but they worked very hard to win this game.”
Zhu Ting, China captain: “We did a good job in the match. We cooperate with each other and we believe in each other. Italy is a strong team. We learned a lot during the match.”
Mazzanti Davide, Italy coach: “It’s very hard to play with China in the first match. We’ve made some mistakes in the first set. After that, we played much better, but China has some good volleyball players.”
Cristina Chirichella, Italy captain: “It’s just the beginning, we have a lot of matches here. We have to find our faith and we are trying to do this.”
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