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Weekend 5
Egypt meets China home
to return back in the standings
 Cairo,
Egypt, July 9, 2008- Egypt men’s volleyball team gets
ready to meet China at the fifth weekend of the
intercontinental round of the 2008 FIVB World League
aiming to improve their record that deteriorated in the
last two weekends after they were leading Pool D at the
end of the second weekend. The matches will be held at
the Police Union Hall in Cairo, Egypt that has a
capacity of 7000 spectators on Friday and Saturday 11
and 12 July 2008.
Egypt head coach Ahmed Zakaria will replace the middle
blocker Hossam Shaarawy by Ahmed Mosaad who played the
first weekend against Poland from the main squad. The
team took one day rest after returning back from Japan
where they played their team in the fourth weekend and
lost twice. The head coach put a special training
program for the team captain Hamdy El Safi who missed
the third weekend for a family problem and also the
players suffering injuries like the right attacker Ahmed
Salah who was ranked third in the overall competition
best scorers and the wing spiker Mohamed Abdel Moneim.
“We will do our best to win both matches against China
this weekend to advance to the second position before
the last weekend against Poland,” Said Egypt head coach
Ahmed Zakaria. “We are sad to lose four consecutive
matches away against China and Japan and we hope that
all our stars regain their performance home against
china with the usual support of our spectators like they
did in the first and second weekends in Alexandria when
we won three out of four matches.” He added.
On the other hand the Chinese team arrived to Egypt
early on Monday and had their first training session on
Tuesday.
The Chinese team came with all the main stars led by the
strong attacker Zhi Yuan who leads the competition best
scorers with 174 points. The head coach Zhou Jianan
insisted to have the training schedule twice daily till
the first match.
Egypt ended at the bottom of Pool D at the end of the
fourth weekend with a win- loss record of 3-5 while
China is ranked second with a record of 4-4 with the
point ratio ahead of Japan which ranked third, but
Poland keeps the leadership of the pool with 5-3 record.
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