The AVC Men’s Club Volleyball Championship press conference on Monday
The 10-day tournament doubles as a qualification tournament for the FIVB Volleyball Men’s Club World Championship. The 16 teams have been divided into four pools:
Pool A: China, Vietnam, Afghanistan;
Pool B: Iran, Qatar, Uzbekistan, Myanmar;
Pool C: Kazakhstan, Indonesia, India, Kuwait;
Pool D: Japan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Singapore, Mongolia.
Due to a visa problem, the Afghan team could not reach Shanghai until Saturday afternoon, to become last team to arrive. There will be one day off after the five-day pool play. When the competition resumes on Friday, the pools’ third or fourth-placed teams will face each other for the 9th-12th places and 13th-16th positions. This will be followed by the quarterfinals on Saturday and Sunday. The semifinals and final are slated for July 8.
The host city’s Shanghai Tang Dynasty team is considered one of the strongest teams at the 2012 tournament, with four national team players in the line-up.
But Liu Ningxin, the team manager, thinks the other way. “We just want to play to our normal form and try to learn as well from such other strong sides as Kazakhstan,” he said at the press conference on Friday.
Singapore has not had a national men’s volleyball team since late 1990s, a fact team manager Ang Swee Aun described as “abnormal.“
“We have a very young team here, with players from three local clubs. I wish to see how they could play against such strong teams as China and try to improve our play after the tournament,” he added.
