Brazil moves into gold medal match

GUADALAJARA, Mexico, October 28, 2011 – World and Pan American champions Brazil won the South American battle against Argentina 26-28, 27-25, 25-22, 25-15 to reach the gold medal match of the Pan American Games men’s volleyball tournament.

Both teams scored with 8 blocks and in an unusual match for both sides, Argentina made one unforced error more than Brazil (37-36).

Wallace de Souza was the top point producer of Brazil with 20 tallies while Thiago Alves charted 13. Gustavo Endres and Renato Russomanno added 8 points apiece. Argentina’s Federico Pereyra and Mariano Giustiniano registered 18 and 11 respectively.

Bruno Rezende (Captain of Brazil): “We reached our first goal: to play at the finals. We are going for the gold medal tomorrow. We made a lot of mistakes on the first two sets. If we want to win gold, we shall not do that. The most important thing was to get in to the finals because we have trained hard for that.”

Sebastián Cole (Captain of Argentina): “We started playing very well. We had our mind set in what we had to do. But we stopped thinking about it and things did not work as they should. We could not recover in the end.”

Rubinho Leonaldo (Coach of Brazil): “It was a very tough match as we expected. Good services and technical strength, but at the same time we had some variations. We could control the match and our players could get the balance.”

Javier Weber (Coach of Argentina): “Argentina had a good match on the first two sets. We tried to get the best from Brazil’s anxiety. They had a very powerful attack and that makes things difficult. We fell down on the fourth set, but I am satisfied with the performance of my team.”