Ocal: “We are affected by

Yunus Ocal emphasized that the athletes of the National Women’s Volleyball team do not wish for the similar performance against the Czech Republic compared to the one against Sweden, he believes that they did not show any of the elements that characterize them as a team, he believes that it is not a matter of will and stress and is waiting for a win-qualification against Azerbaijan on Tuesday so that they don’t get involved in adventures in front of the mighty Turkey.

Analytically: “Since we started the preparation and had a series of friendly matches, we kept having many ‘ups and downs’ and I was afraid of that. Yesterday we played excellently and I expected, if not as good a performance, a similar one. We never got into the spirit of the game… We hardly showed any elements of the game and we were very… fragile.

It is not a matter of preparation, but of will. If you want, you can do terrible things. If you don’t want to or you’re stressed you can’t do anything. We made changes, took a timeout, but nothing changed…”

When asked about what he expects from here and beyond from his team and the qualification battle, he noted: “Today we missed a great opportunity and I hope we don’t… look for it later. Certainly, against Azerbaijan we will play as if it is a ‘final’ and, if we win, we will logically continue and then we have Turkey.

It’s two consecutive matches again and we definitely have to play at a high level. If we want to go through we have to play better than usual, like we did against Sweden.”

For his part, Yiannis Athanasopoulos emphasized that: “I think it was important that we lost to Azerbaijan in this way on Friday. We talked a lot with the girls, we said that this is not the team that played in the first match and the girls came in with a ‘knife in their teeth’, they reacted and as the best team we won.

As I told the Czech media, it is the most difficult group in Eurovolley. Tomorrow we play Turkey, which is No. 1 in the world, but with today’s victory we entered the ‘bay’. If we continue like this, we can play against Germany, but for sure the crucial match for us is against Sweden, where, if we win, we will be in a big percentage in the next phase”.

Finally, to the question about how he sees the Greek team, he noted that: “After the matches I saw with Germany, Sweden, I lost sleep. She was excellent in the reception, in the block defense, but we analyzed her very well and pressed her on the serve and managed to stop her. But with the young girls he has, he plays really nice volleyball and if they manage to keep the reception at a good level, it’s very difficult to stop them.”