Unstoppable Brazil will be seeking their fourth consecutive title at the FIVB World Grand Prix final round while a changing Chinese squad is hoping a quick return from growing pain after personnel transition.

 

Brazil, Italy, Russia, Poland and the Netherlands plus host China will be playing in the grueling tournament slated in Ningbo, China from August 22-26.

 

Like always, the pre-competition press conference on Tuesday was but a formality with most of the team coaches playing down title winning prospects.

 

Brazilian coach Jose Roberto Guimaraes kept a low key as usual, saying that the team will try to do the best in the final round.

 

After the 52-year-old coach took over in 2003, the Brazilian team has been on an uprising road, winning 13 gold medals out of 16 major tournaments.

 

Besides, Brazil is the main conqueror of the FIVB Grand Prix, with six wins (1994, 1996, 1998, 2004, 2005 and 2006). Now finishing atop on the general rankings after three weeks' preliminaries in this year's edition, Brazil emerged as the heaviest favorite for the 2007 title.

 

Being the host, Chinese head coach Chen Zhonghe was thrown the most questions at the conference.

 

"Our team is very young and always had ups and downs in the first three weeks' playing. Besides, the veteran players could not contribute to the team due to plummeting form or injury," the 50-year-old coach said when asked to comment on his team's performance.

 

"If we were not the host, it would be impossible to play in the finals this year."

 

China, failing to pick title at any Grand Prix preliminary leg for the first time in the past four years, is feeling the growing pain of personnel transition after finishing in a mere eighth place with four wins against five losses.

 

"We lost to Russia, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands in the preliminaries. They are all strong teams but we have to put blame on ourselves," he said.

 

"We had problems delivering effective offense, picking off less scores than other strong teams in attacking and counter-attack, and our serving and blocking are not convincing either. So our ranking conforms with our performance."

 

The main injuries of the China squad come from wing spiker Wang Yimei, middle blocker Zhao Ruirui, setter Feng Kun and libero Zhang Na, who all came to Ningbo to watch the games.

 

Poland coach Marco Bonitta said he was very happy to lead Poland into the elite tournament. "It's the first time for Poland to enter the final six of the elite tournament. We are happy to play here and will give all out," he said at the press conference.

 

The Polish team, which lost all three matches on its home soil in the opening round, was fully fired-up in the remaining two rounds under some magic build-up from Bonitta, the former head coach of Italy.

 

At the six-strong conference, the only coach who was able to give bold and straight answer was Russia's coach Giovanni Caprara, who commented that Russia is the strongest team of all playing here.

 

Russia, who had been hoping for a fourth title at the tournament, finished third behind Brazil and Italy after the preliminaries. They lost 3-1 to the Brazilians in last year's final.

 

(Xinhua News Agency August 22, 2007)