Varna, Bulgaria, August 11, 2019 – Reigning Olympic champions Brazil became the fifth team to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The South Americans survived a Bulgarian match point in the third set to overpower the hosts in a five-set match 3-2 (23-25, 19-25, 32-30, 25-16, 15-11) winning Pool A of the Tokyo Volleyball Qualification tournament.
Renan Dal Zotto, Brazil coach: "I really suffered everything that happened at the beginning. Everything for Bulgaria worked - the block, the spike, the serve and our team couldn’t handle it. I needed to do something different and that’s why I started using a different configuration of players. In addition I saw something very special that came from the heart of my players. After we survived a match point in the third set we managed to recover and to focus without being disturbed by the audience. It was very hard to play against Bulgaria here in such an atmosphere. Now we are relaxed to focus just on the road to Tokyo.”
Yoandy Leal, Brazil player: "This win is incredible and very special to me. I will go to the Olympics for the first time in my career and it comes after four years of waiting to become part of the Brazilian team. We made our first step qualifying for the Games and now I have to prove my place in the squad. Today we had a very tough opponent. Bulgaria played really well in the first two sets and it was difficult for us to find the way to stop them. And then our coach made some succesful substitutions and tactical changes and we started doing side-outs and managed to go over Bulgarian block."
Silvano Prandi, Bulgaria coach: "We played a great match against one of the best teams in the world. The statistics showed that we were even better in some of the components. But at the end we lost and it hurts a lot. We didn’t manage to keep the same level of playing after the first two sets. We didn’t manage to win the point who would send us to Tokyo. We made a mistake and after that Brazil just started playing better and deserved their 3-2 victory."
Tsvetan Sokolov, Bulgaria player: "It happened. We didn’t manage to use our advantage and the Brazilian errors. We lost a single point in the third set which cost us the victory. I don’t have many things to say. We couldn’t win against Olympic champions. They defeated us and they go to Tokyo."