“It was a crazy match! It’s super difficult to play against Japan. We have a joke among us that whenever we have to play against Japan, we have to take three or four coffees before that to have some extra caffeine, some extra energy. We need to attack one, two, three times to finish a rally,” Gabi told VBTV. “But it was an important victory. We knew that it would not be easy to play here in Japan, but you could see how the team performed with aggressiveness, having a lot of patience… We did not make many mistakes. Our block-defense system was working well, especially on serve, and, in attack, Roberta could use everyone who played today.
“This is what we need – the team performing well makes it much easier for us. Now we need to rest a little bit – we’ve had a tough week – and prepare for the Finals. At the Finals, we need to be really aggressive from the start. We don’t know whom we are going to play in the quarterfinals, but for sure, it is going to be pretty difficult.”