Bruno (1) celebrates with top scorer Wallace de Souza after the sweeping victory over Russia
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 19, 2016 – Setter Bruno Rezende played brilliant in the distribution of the attack as Brazil advanced to their fourth consecutive gold medal match at the Olympic Game with a convincing shutout victory over defending champions Russia on Friday night.
Coach Bernardo Rezende commended the ability of his floor leader while commenting the victory during the post game press conference.
Bernardo Rezende, Coach of Brazil: Today we played our best volleyball in the whole tournament. Our serves were aggressive, everybody that came in gave all they had, and they had a lot, and Bruno was brilliant distributing the game. Because the expectations were so high, we have played with our backs against the wall but we have improved a lot, showing determination against France, going also through difficult moments before winning against Argentina and today playing our best. We put pressure with our serves. We are in a good shape now and ready for the match against Italy. They are going strong right now and it is going to be a very tough match.
Bruno Rezende, Captain of Brazil: I hope we can continue with the consistency we showed today. It was our best match of the tournament and I think we still can improve a little going into the finals. We are playing at home in front of our fans so we need to control our emotions and play with balanced minds. Everybody expects us to win the gold medal and there is a lot of tension. Today we played more relaxed and everything went good. Italy is playing well and they are very aggressive with their serves.
Lucas Saatkamp, Player of Brazil: We established our service game tonight and missed very few counterattacks. Italy deserves a lot of credit for their victory over the United States with their come-from-behind win today. Their team has grown a lot with (Osmany) Juantorena.
Vladimir Alekno, Coach of Russia: After winning in London and the European Championship we couldn’t do it with this young team. We made too many errors and that is the main reason we ended losing against a strong team like Brazil. We couldn’t solve their serves.
Sergey Tetyukhin, Captain of Russia: It is a sad loss, We didn’t play well today but we still can come back on Sunday to battle for the bronze medal.