Beijing, September 14 – Comments from coaches and athletes of Sweden and the United States after their Pool B preliminary match.

Arvid Ottosson (Coach of SWE)

On changing positions:

“I want our players to be able to play all positions, and practice every position, so when we compete with other teams they won’t know our strong positions.”

On goals (eight in the first half, three in the second half):

“The players who came on in the second half didn’t have enough time, so they had less goals.”

Niklas Hultqvist (SWE)

On performance:

“We were very good today. We had good communications with each other. We got some good positions in the match. Everyone’s shooting was good.”

On being the top scorer:

“I practice and train a lot.”

On Chinese food:

“I like Chinese food very much. When we were in Sweden, we eat Chinese food sometimes.”

On teammate Oskar Kuus (SWE):

“Oskar and I are very good friends. We are in the same team in my nation.”

Thomas Henry Parrigin (Coach of USA)

On performance:

“Our players had games yesterday, and when other teams had games, they watched and they all got tired.”

On conceding many penalties:

“I don’t know. They didn’t get penalties yesterday, so I don’t know why. Goalball game is different from others.”

On defense:

“We did learn a lot from this match. We will pay attention to that aspect. We need more practice.”

On being a goalball coach:

“I like this sport. I discovered it at college. It was the first sport for blind people I came across. I like it.”

Donte’ Mickens (USA)

On a new way to throw:

“I tried a new way to throw the balls. Unfortunately I made a lot of highballs. However, the new throw was not really very risky, so I just have to concentrate more next time.”

On opponents:

“Sweden is a great team. They’ve got a perfect defense.”

On impressions of Beijing:

“We’ve been around the city a little bit. Beijing is a very nice city. We did some shopping. The people are nice and a lot of them can speak good English. I cannot wait to come back next year.”

NS: cq/cl/sy/gmt/zsb/jp/xy