Women’s Volleyball Coach Cesar “At his Lowest Point Ever” As Team rises to No. 5
South Korea’s women’s volleyball team has to worry about its lowest-ever Asian Games performance.
The Korean women’s volleyball team lost to China 0-3 (12-25 21-25 16-25)
in straight sets on Thursday in their first match of the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games quarterfinal round in Group E.
The team’s hopes of reaching the quarterfinals were dashed.
It was the second time in 17 years that the Korean women’s volleyball team missed out on an Asian Games medal after finishing fifth at the 2006 Doha Games. 파워볼
South Korea will now play the remainder of the quarterfinal round against North Korea on Friday,
followed by the two-day fifth through eighth place match on Saturday.
A top-five finish is not out of the question.
South Korea, ranked 40th in the world, will likely face Kazakhstan (32nd in the world),
Chinese Taipei (45th), and North Korea (unranked) in the 5th-8th place match.
The set score was 0-3 (24-26 23-25 23-25).
“We will prepare well to achieve the highest possible fifth place in the remaining rankings,”
said head Coach Cesar Gonzalez after the match at the Changchen Campus Gymnasium of Hangzhou Normal University in China, adding,
“We will focus on the match against Kazakhstan, which will be a difficult match.”
When asked to assess the performance of the Korean women’s volleyball team,
Gonzalez said, “Results tell the position, and I think (the quarterfinal disappointment)
is the reality of Korean women’s volleyball,” adding,
“We need to find solutions to change the situation.”
Cesar’s team has had a string of bad results this year,
from the FIVB Volleyball Nations League (12 straight VNL losses)
to the Asian Championships (lowest-ever sixth place finish), the Paris Olympic Qualifiers (seven straight losses) and the Asian Games.
“We still have a lot of matches left, so I hope (the players)
will treat every match as an opportunity to grow and raise the level of Korean volleyball,” Cesar said.
“It’s like Serbia losing (Tijana) Boskovic and Turkuye losing (Melissa) Vargas,”
he said when asked about not being able to fill the void left by the retired Kim Yeon-kyung.
During my tenure, I tried to get the 30 to 40 points that Kim used to get from different players.”