Betim, Brazil, December 4, 2019 – Zenit Kazan earned their first win at the 2019 FIVB Volleyball Men’s Club World Championship as the Russian team defeated Qatar’s Al-Rayyan Sports Club 3-1 (21-25, 25-20, 25-23, 25-21) at the Ginasio Poliesportivo Divino Braga, in Betim, Brazil.
Zenit Kazan’s head coach Alexey Verbov: “We wanted to see some progress from our first match today, but we didn’t. Honestly, I think we feel worse now than we felt after the first match. Some players made a step forward, but others didn’t. It’s weird, they don’t look like the team that was playing well in the Russian Championship just a few days ago. I look at their eyes and it’s like they’re empty. I want to see some fire, some life there, but I still can’t. I think we’re still adjusting and hopefully we’ll be playing at a better level when the semifinals come. Right now, I’d say we’re playing at 50 percent of our capacity at best.”
Zenit Kazan’s opposite Tsvetan Sokolov: “It’s good that we won the match, but we didn’t play at the level we expected. We still made a lot of mistakes and I hope we can improve going forward. Next match will be a very special one to me as I’ll play my former team and I hope we can play better and get another win.”
Al-Rayyan Sports Club’s outside hitter Marcus Vinicius de Souza: “We are missing some important players due to injury and our main goal here is to learn. These are three of the best teams in the world and I think we progressed from our first match. We played at the same level as Zenit in the start of the match, but unfortunately we weren’t able to keep it up. But I’m satisfied with the team today.”