Saint Petersburg, Russia, August 10, 2019 - Russia claimed a second consecutive win by beating Cuba in straight sets at the Olympic qualifiers for Tokyo 2020 and are ready to face Iran in the decisive match on Sunday.
Dmitry Volkov, Russia outside hitter: It was a hard game, though we thought it could have been more easy. But Cuba served very well and we had some problems in reception and consequently in attack. We had a task not to risk on serving but make less mistakes than yesterday. The second and the third set were more difficult for us as we relaxed a little bit and made too many errors. The crowd helped us very much, but still we didn't show our best performance. I hope that we do better in the decisive game against Iran tomorrow.
Igor Kobzar, Russia captain: This game was quite nervous. It depended a lot on Cuba's performance. Cuba is that kind of team that can play very poor or on the contrary very high class volleyball in the same match. It is impossible to stop them when they play on courage. We used their weak periods to take an advantage and then managed to keep it until the end of every set.
Nicolas Vives, Cuba head coach: The final result is worse than yesterday, but the paradox is that we played much better. We are a very young team and we played against one of the biggest volleyball teams in the world. So the main gain for our team is experience. We just needed some luck in the end of sets two and three, but anyway I liked the way we played.
Livan Osoria, Cuba captain: We were playing against a team from the top-five tonight. They have a perfect block and use any mistake we make.