PARIS, France, Jul 29 – After losing the opening Paris 2024 Olympic game to top ranked side Brazil, Head Coach Japheth Munala believes the national women’s volleyball team can go places if only they are able to minimize on some technical errors.
Reacting to their straight set loss to 23-times South American Champions, Munala who made his Summer Games debut as a coach in Paris, candidly admitted that there is a need to bolster speed and back court defense well in time for Wednesday’s encounter against two -times Olympics bronze medalists Poland programmed for 23:00 Kenyan time.
“Our performance wasn’t that bad today. In the first and second set, we gave our all, we attacked but sadly, we could not get a set. We lost it completely in the third set. I think after the first two sets the girls gave up and at some point, I thought they would never recover the 2-set deficit.” Munala told Capital Sport after the game.
The veteran Coach nevertheless sung the praises of 10-time African Champions; acknowledging the fact that they went down to the second-best team in the world.
Brazil is ranked second in the FIVB Rankings behind world number 1 Italy and ahead of Poland, Türkiye and USA while Malkia Strikers are ranked 20th globally.
–Ball Reception—
“Our problem has always been reception, but today, I am glad our girls did much better in that area than I expected, they have really tried. The other problem was also hitting the ball at the net, we were hitting hard but failed to ground the ball on several occasions. We tried and tried, but the Brazilians blocked our shots,” Munala observed.
–Unimaginable Speed—
Coach Munala also admitted that the Brazilians were too fast, and that the high intensity nature of the match meant they had to really push themselves to the limit.
“The speed of our court adversaries was unimaginable, our defense on the back court failed today. We’ll work on our speed and back-court defense as we prepare for our match against Poland.”
Munala believes he succeeded in instilling confidence to his players ostensibly to enable them go the extra mile against the Brazilian stars.
“The morale when they set foot on the court was great, we had discussed amongst ourselves that we’ll go and do our best without any jitters and pressure. This is also a platform for the players to market themselves given the number of eyeballs glued to pay TV channels.”
Munala nevertheless believes it’s still early days with room for improvements.
“We still have work to do. Poland is the toughest team of them all in my opinion. We will give it our all, though. We will definitely tweak some positions then see how it goes in our second match.”
–About Poland—
The Poland women’s national volleyball team (Polish: Reprezentacja Polski w piłce siatkowej kobiet) represents Poland in international volleyball competition.
The team is controlled by the Polish Volleyball Federation (Polski Związek Piłki Siatkowej, PZPS), the governing body for volleyball in Poland, which represents the country in international competitions and friendly matches.
Poland’s greatest achievements to date have been winning bronze medals at the 1964 and the 1968 Summer Olympics, silver medal at the 1952 World Championship as well as gold medals at the 2003 and the 2005 European Championship.
The Polish national team is ranked 3rd in the FIVB world ranking as of 20 May 2024
–Next Match—
Wed, 31 Jul·Pool B: Poland vs Kenya (10pm local time, 11pm Kenyan time)
-Alex Isaboke is reporting from Paris, France-
