Beijing, September 14 – Comments from coaches and athletes of Japan and Finland after their Pool B preliminary match.

Shinji Mizuno (Coach of JPN)

On experience gained:

“We still need to work harder on the ability to deal with tension and pressure.”

On preparation:

“To prepare for the game, we had watched and analyzed videos of other teams’ matches and tried to learn their strengths and weakness.”

On difficulties:

“Though we won today, we were level twice which made us nervous. Then, I called for a time-out to relax our players and remind them not to concede any penalties during offence.”

On strategy:

“Team defense was important than offence.”

On participation in the tournament:

“Firstly, Japan and China are neighbors and we wanted to come to China. Secondly, many powers are converging in this tournament so we would have many opportunities to learn from them.”

On facilities:

“The accessible facilities of the gymnasium are very good. The volunteers deserve to be mentioned. They are very friendly.”

Yusuke Hanai (JPN)

On the close match:

“The result at half-time was 3-3. I wanted to keep the scores level and try not to let our team fall behind.”

Masatoshi Ito (JPN)

On the last, slow, throw:

“We were a goal ahead. I knew the match was going to end. So I made a slow throw to waste time.”

Timo Laitinen (Coach of FIN)

On Finland’s young players:

“They need to play more.”

On his words during the time-out with 9 seconds remaining:

“I told them to score in the corner, not the center.”

On team changes for the next game:

“I don’t plan to change our strategy and will add some older players to the team. We will play like this. We have come here to learn. I hope that after many games they can play as well as our first team.”

NS: gmt/cyj/if/cq/zsb/jp/xy