2018 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship
- 9–30 September
- Schedule
- Teams
- Power Rankings
Things are definitely not looking good for current Olympic champions and World Championships runner-ups Brazil. The team, who traveled to Bulgaria without its two starting outside hitters, Ricardo Lucarelli, and Mauricio Borges, out with injuries, split two preparatory friendlies against Germany this week, a team that didn’t even qualify for the WCH. On the first game, Brazil won the 4 sets of play by the very tight scores of 25/23, 26/24, 27/25, and 25/23. Then, in the second game, disaster struck, and Brazil lost 3-1 (7/25, 25/27, 22/25, and 19/25).
Brazil’s Evandro Guerra and Kadu are not worried though:
“These were two games in which Renan Dal Zotto had the chance to use all 14 players who will be in the WCH, against a strong team, which is Germany. They are very well trained put us in situations of major difficulties, where we had to react quickly at almost every play.” – Evandro
“These were two very important appointments for the team to make the necessary adjustments in this final phase of preparation for the WCH. It will be very important championship, with an extremely strong and balanced field, and in those two games we faced a good team, which gave us the chance to get even better prepared.” – Kadu
Brazil will debut on September 12 against Egypt. It will then face the Netherlands, France, Canada, and China. Although it will have no trouble qualifying for the second round, things will only get tougher when the opponents on the other side of the net turn out not be Germany.
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