Brazil retains world crown

 

TOKYO, Japan, December 3, 2006.- Brazil easily brushed past Poland in the final of the 2006 FIVB Men’s World Championship successfully defending their crown on Sunday. The team’s second consecutive World Championship gold medal solidify their position of leaders in all international Volleyball events as reigning World, Olympic and World League Champions as well as World Cup Champions and World Grand Champions.

 

The 2002 world champions defended their title in Tokyo with an awesome display of power and precision brushing aside Poland. The Brazilians won 25-12, 25-22, 25-17 and had their fans dancing in the aisles of Yoyogi National Stadium's No. 1 Gymnasium long before the victory was completed.

 

Andre Nascimento led Brazil with 14 points and Gilberto Godoy and Dante Amaral added 12 and 11 points respectively.

 

Bulgaria fought back from one-set down to beat Serbia-Montenegro 3-1 and claimed the bronze medal. Bulgaria won 22-25, 25-23, 25-23, 25-23 against fourth-ranked Serbia-Montenegro to finish with a 9-2 record and improve on their 13th-place finish at the 2002 worlds. Serbia-Montenegro ended with an 8-3 record and their fourth-place finish was the same as four years ago.

 

Germany beat USA 3-2 in a wonderful match to clinch ninth place. Germany won the first two sets, missed a match point in the third, and finally clinched it on their third match point of the tie-break, and fourth in all. The score was 25-17, 25-18, 25-27, 20-25, 17-15 earning the 32nd-ranked Germans the ninth position in their first appearance at the Worlds since 1994. The fifth-ranked Americans had to settle for 10th, one place lower than in 2002 and 1998.

 

Christian Pampel and Marcus Popp had 20 and 19 points respectively for Germany while David McKinzie and Reid Priddy scored 20 and 18 for USA .

 

Canada may not have achieved the coach Glenn Hoag’s target of a top 10 finish, but at least they improved on their world ranking after beating 3-1 Puerto Rico in their final match of the world championships. The No. 12 ranked Canadians finished in 11th position after winning 25-17, 18-25, 25-22, 25-21 to avenge an earlier defeat by Puerto Rico and finished with a 5-6 record for the whole tournament. Puerto Rico finished 12th with a 4-7 record.

 

Fred Winters led Canada with 16 points and Murray Grapentine and Dallas Soonias scored 13 apiece. Puerto Rican Hector Soto inflated his leading-point totals with 30 more tallies and Victor Rivera and Luis Rodriguez added 11 and 10 respectively.

 

USA Coach Hugh McCutcheon: “ Germany played a good match today, and certainly at the beginning of the match their service was very strong. For us these have been a very difficult couple of weeks. We have performed below our expectations and below what our standard of play is. The area where we were good in was that we fought. We are disappointed to lose but that is part of playing sports. We are here in the fifth set and gave ourselves a chance to win. We did it the other day when we were fighting for our lives to get out of the second pool. That is the nature of the beast. The heart is difficult to teach, but the volleyball we can make better. Hopefully that is what we will do over the next year.”

 

Canada coach Glenn Hoag: "Our main objective was to finish in the top ten, so we lost an important match yesterday. I think the players were very disappointed, so we had to get back mentally. Our starters lost a lot of energy against the USA , so we had to use fresh players, which was good. They gain experience from this type of international match, and it is great for them to play. Today maybe we had fresher legs, and I think that made the difference."

 

Puerto Rico coach Carlos Cardona: "We could have done more in this game, but since we lost our player Jose Rivera it was difficult. With our fresh team we played well. Our goal was to make it to the second round, but we got to the final round so it was a result of great significance. I also think Canada played very well in this match."

 

Italy swept France 3-0 (25-19, 25-17, 30-28) to clinch fifth place, and Russia claimed the seventh place in defeating Japan 25-18, 22-25, 25-18, 25-17.