USA Coach John Speraw was relieved but not over confident after the victory over France
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 13, 2016 – USA Coach John Speraw does not want his team to rest on its laurels after their 3-1 victory over France preferring to concentrate on getting the win ar the last match of the preliminary round against Mexico.
Speraw praised the poise and determination showed by his team in the first and fourth sets of the victory against France, their second in a row after losing in the two previous appearances in the tournament.
John Speraw, Coach of United States: There is not much time to feel comfortable but we are in a much better situation than a couple of days ago. We need to regain our focus and get three more points against Mexico to ensure our spot in the quarterfinals. The key for us today was our poise. We were able to come back in the first set and also to play good ball in the fourth set after losing the third by wide margin.
David Lee, Captain of USA: I am really proud of how our guys fought. We had our backs against the wall. We wanted to win and want to continue in the tournament. We can get one more win against Mexico, then we guarantee that we will be in the quarterfinals. I feel like we scrapped the entire time, we fought for every point just like we fought against Brazil. If we continue to play this way then we have a great chance of moving on to this tournament.
Matt Anderson, Player of USA: It was a great match, another must-win for us. I think statistically, it is where it has to be. Again we had a little bit of a low in the third set that put us into a really big rut to climb out. Going through the fourth set, we just had an idea that we had to get it all out there, and there was no turning back now. We played really well.
Mexico have been playing really good. They are having a great tournament; they had a great qualifier to get here. It’s not a team we can take lightly. Even though in our history that we’ve beaten Mexico many times, they’re a great team. This is the Olympics and anything can happen. We just have to go that match and have a 100 per cent in our mind and our energy.
Laurent Tillie, Coach of France: I am sad for the result but I am proud of my team’s spirit. We tried to find a solution against USA and we tried to get clever, but it was not enough. We lost against a very, very good USA team, and we have no regret because we tried everything possible.
Benjamin Toniutti, Captain of France: It’s difficult to lose this game because we played really well. It was a nice game, but in the end we lost the game. We really fought in this match and this is the positive point. We will try to see what we will do in the next match, but for sure we will go inside the court with the same attitude.
It was a very close fight in the fourth set. We made some counter-attack and we didn’t make the point. We made some mistakes and I had a bad set in the end. So these things made the difference in this high-level match.
Antonin Rouzier, Player of France: We didn’t play like we used to. We started with a good first set but we didn’t maintain the intensity. We have a lot of frustrations in this match. We really wanted to win because it is really important.
Every set was very close and in these four sets, we could not side-out in the last few plays. USA played amazingly well in service. The best team won today, but we have to maintain the positivity when we face Brazil in the next match.