Coelho on Porto after Vitória: “No one will fight harder than us” | OneFootball

FC Porto’s volleyball team secured a place in the women’s league play-off semi-finals after beating Vitória SC 3-0, with Miguel Coelho admitting he was “very happy” to have “got through the quarter-finals without dropping a set” and because he feels the group “is in a good moment.”

Aware that “playing in a championship semi-final is a huge privilege,” the Dragons’ coach assured that the blue-and-whites “will try to win” and issued a warning: “No one is going to fight harder than us, everyone can be sure of that.”

On the way to the semi-finals“We managed to get through the quarter-finals without dropping a set and with different combinations within the team. Exploring different alternatives is important in the play-offs because we play within a very short space of time, and the teams that lose will try to counter our strategy from the previous game, hence the importance of changing the team’s composition. I’m very happy that we went through with different combinations and without losing any sets. Vitória SC at home have more quality in transition, fight much harder in defense, and also take more risks in attack. Even so, I think those were six very well-played sets, with a lot of confidence. The team is in a good moment.”

Offensive efficiency“We come out of these quarter-finals with extremely high attacking efficiency percentages. Last week we broke every record since we arrived at FC Porto, largely thanks to the work done by the middle blockers. Today we had very high efficiency on the wings, but we continue to see Saska Durovic and Kelsey Veltman keeping the ball moving in side-out and transition. It may look easy, but it takes a lot of work from the reception, which has to create good conditions, and from the defense, which has to give the setter new conditions. Both Lila and Milana managed to do a lot of damage to the opponent’s blocking line and, because of that, we achieved very high attacking efficiency. I’m happy with the work of both setters.”

Winning mentality“Regardless of the opponent, playing in a championship semi-final is a huge privilege. I still remember very well how much it hurt not to reach the major deciding matches last year, so my mission is to pass that sense of privilege on to the team. I think we’ve done that since the start of the year and we like being in the decisive moments. We’re going to try to win, and you can expect a team very similar to the one you’ve been seeing in this final stretch. Sometimes it’s harder to maintain the level than to raise it, but that’s what we’re going to try to do. This is an important message internally: no one is going to fight harder than us, everyone can be sure of that. We’ll try to let the quality of our play help us and to be better than the opponent, because at this stage that’s what matters.”

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.