Montreux, Switzerland, May 29, 2015 - Today’s game had no impact on the ranking as Japan had won both of its games against Turkey (3-0) and Germany (3-1). On the other side, Italy was with two defeats against the same opponents. The Japanese quickly displayed a superior game and defeated their Italian counterparts 3-0 (25-12, 28-26, 25-16).
Italy, who came to Montreux without their key players, has shown some nice plays in the first two matches but couldn’t avoid making a lot of unforced errors. That pattern was reflected in the first set against Japan. There were clearly too many mistakes and the set was quickly taken by Masayoshi Manabe’s team (25-12).
The Azzure had however a good start in the second set with some great plays and approached the technical timeout leading by 5 points. The Japanese slowly came back to close the gap, reaching their opponents at 22 -22. At 24 on both sides, a thrilling battle started between the Italian outside hitter #11 Sylla and her Japanese counterpart #12 Ishii. A powerful kill by Sylla offered a first set ball to the Italians. Unfortunately this was followed by a service error in the net. Ishii scored the next point with a kill, before Sylla responded the same way, and then Ishii again to offer a new opportunity to conclude the set. It is finally with a tip from Sylla which ended out of the court that Japan got to win the set (28-26).
The public was wondering whether Italy could keep up with the level they had just played for the third set. Although the players of Bonitta could manage to lower the number of unforced mistakes, Japan outscored their opponents during the entire set (25-16) and didn’t offer them many opportunities.