WL: Clayton Stanley and USA closer to Final Six!

The North American team still winning! In Korea they claimed three victories, losing only one set! If they keep playing this way, they can buy tickets to Sofia.

It seems that in Pool C there are now two strong pretenders to the promotion to the Final round of World League that will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria. USA, that is performing very well from the beginning of the competition, claimed 6 wins in two last weekends with only 3 sets lost! Their direct competitor is France that from the 20th of May won over every team they faced, but still can’t beat USA. 

The same situation took place during the 3rd weekend. USA won over Italy 3-1 and Korea 3-0, the same results for France with Korea (3-1) and Italy (3-0). Straight duel between both teams ended in 3 sets in the interests of the Americans. The French coach, Philippe Blain, didn’t hide disappointment: “Since the start of the 2012 World League, today’s match was the worst. Our players were down physically and mentally”. Pierre Pujol added: “USA is one of the strongest teams in the world and they are superior than us. I am very disappointed with our play today”. However, they play very good volleyball and they still have chances to go to the Final round in Bulgaria.

An interesting situation has the team of Italy. After a perfect first weekend in front of their home spectators in Florence, the coach Mauro Berruto decided to sent to Lyon and Gwangju a young team led by coach Paolo Montagnani and captain Simone Buti. The rest of the team is getting ready for the Olympic Games in the care of Berruto himself. Because, as he wrote on his blog, “in less than 50 days to the Olympic Games, around our team there is too much chaos, and it’s the sacred time”. For 6 matches the “alternative” Italian team won only one over Korea (3-2) in Gwangju. But apparently this is not the most important goal for the Italian coach now.

In Pool C the team of USA still on top of standings with 20 points, France stays on the second position with 17 points, the classification closes Korea with 6 points, behind Italy that collected 11 points.

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The last tournament of the preliminary round of this year’s World League the Pool C will play in Dallas, USA between the 29th of June and the 1st of July.

Photo: FIVB