Manila, Philippines, October 23, 2016 – VakifBank Istanbul bagged the bronze in the FIVB Volleyball Women’s Club World Championship on Sunday and the players felt that the experience against the toughest clubs made them a better team.
Giovanni Guidetti, VakifBank Istanbul coach: “I would like to congratulate the referee (Arturo Di Giacomo) for today, that was his last match and he had an incredible career. I would like to congratulate the Philippine Superliga organisation and Filipino fans as well. Everything was really well organised.
“I'm proud of my players. They put in a good performance on the court, they had a lot of courage and finished with the win. It is nice to finish with a win even though it was not the final match we were dreaming of.
“I'm pretty confident for the Turkish league because we are the same team. We will not change much; we'll go to every match with the same squad. Right now Eczacibasi are incredible, but I know we have a lot of chance to compete with them.”
Gozde Kirdar, VakifBank Istanbul captain: “It’s not easy to play this game because we both lost yesterday, and everybody's mood was down. But we came to finish good, and we won. It's better to win third place than fourth place.
“We are a new team and we have new players, and this kind of tournament makes us better and makes us know and trust each other better.”
“The Turkish league will start, and we have more confidence now after this game.”
Zhu Ting, VakifBank Istanbul player: “It’s not a very good match for me today, but I thank my captain and coach for always believing in me. I believe I will be much better, I will practice on my reception when we go back to Turkey.”
Zoran Terzic, Volero Zurich coach: “I would like to congratulate VakifBank, they deserved to win. Definitely yesterday's game was a big shock for us and we have not yet recovered for today's game. We did play a little better than yesterday's game but definitely it's not the same thing in the first three to four games. We need to work a lot for the next period, psychologically, but I think Volero has the potential to take medals in big competitions.”
Natalya Mammadova, Volero Zurich captain: “It was a great game. They played very well. We made too much mistakes, but we have to move forward.
Mariana Costa, Volero Zurich player: “We knew we were facing a difficult team. We witnessed that when we had good reception, we had problems in passing, and the blocking of VakifBank is the reason why we lost the first set and ended like this.”