German fans celebrate at Spodek Arena of Katowice after their team captured the bronze medal
Katowice, Poland, September 21, 2014 – Germany team saved their best defensive game for the bronze medal contest against France when also counted with the strong offence displayed by the trio of Grozer, Schwarz and Kaliberda.
Germany coach, Vital Heynen: I’m super happy, but sitting next to coach Tillie I don’t feel so happy. They were the revelation of the tournament and played a fantastic. We played fantastic game today and defended more than France which is something.”
Germany captain, Jochen Schöps: We are extremely happy, even some tears dropped, everybody saw how we enjoyed this victory. I’m happy and proud how we reacted to yesterday’s loss. Everyone was focused on recovery but not thinking too much.
Overall, I am not so happy everytime we lost 3-0. When we play good, we really play very good; but when we play bad, we really play bad. There was really nothing in between that. In the end, we fought and tried to keep the score even and we won and reached our goal of winning the bronze medal.
I think from the overall performance in the World Championship, Brazil is the bigger favourite. After experiencing it yesterday, Poland in Poland is very difficult. With that crowd, it is really difficult, although I still think Brazil has a little bit more of an advantage.
France coach Laurent Tillie: Congratulations to German team. I’m disappointed, especially in the about the second set when we had a lot of opportunities. When we arrived here we didn’t thought that we would be in the Final 4, but we were and we wanted more. We didn’t have speed and energy and motivation. I made some changes but maybe a little bit late. We gave everything what we had to win.
France captain Benjamin Toniutti: Congratulations to German team, they played amazing today. The three spikers, Schwarz, Grozer, Kaliberda played amazing today and we couldn’t find any solution to stop them. Our defense wasn’t good today and we didn’t play well. We don’t really know why. We played 11 good matches in the whole tournament.