The eagerly-anticipated 2011 Macao Galaxy Entertainment FIVB World Grand Prix Finals kicks off today (August 24) at the Macao East Asian Games Dome, with Brazil, USA, Russia, Serbia, Italy, Japan, Thailand and hosts China contesting for the prestigious FIVB World Grand Prix title.

The Organizing Committee held a press conference yesterday (August 23) and invited the participating teams to meet and share their thoughts with the media.  Mr. Vong Iao Lek, President of the Organizing Committee, expressed his honor that the Finals is staged in Macao and extended his warmest welcome to the teams and officials. He is confident that spectators worldwide will witness some of the most exciting volleyball actions in the next few days.

The head coaches then in turn introduced their teams and revealed their expectation for the Finals.

Brazil head coach José Roberto Guimarães: “I am very happy to be here with my team, and I would like to say thank you to Macao for the very good organization of the Finals.  I think we are in a very tough group, with Italy, Japan and USA, and we have to play very well to get to the semi-final.  But we are in good shape and we will do our best.”

China head coach Yu Juemin: “I am glad to be in Macao for the FIVB World Grand Prix Finals.  We are a young team, and I believe it is a good opportunity for players to learn and get some valuable experience.  We will try our best to put up a good performance in the Finals.”

Italy head coach Massimo Barbolini: “We are so glad to be here in Macao.  It is important that we reach our first goal: to be in the final eight of the competition.  We are in a very difficult pool, because we have four of the top five teams from the World Championships.  All matches will be difficult, but we will do our best to try to get to the final four.”

Japan head coach Masayoshi Manabe: “We are happy to be here and will do our best in the final round.”

Russia head coach Vladimir Kuzyutkin: “I would like to congratulate everyone on reaching the final of the FIVB World Grand Prix. I want to wish good luck to all the teams and to say that the organization is very good.”

Serbia head coach Zoran Terzic: “I am very happy that the Serbia Team qualified for the final eight in Macao, as you know this is our first ever participation in the FIVB World Grand Prix. We will do our best. We hope and expect that we will achieve satisfactory results.”

Thailand head coach Kiattipong Radchatagriengkai: “First of all thank you very much for the warm welcome, we are very happy to be here. Thank you to the organizers, sponsors and media for organizing this event. We are very happy and lucky to come here, as it is our first time to come here. FIVB World Grand Prix is a very good competition for our players to learn and to improve techniques. All the best to all the players and coaches, and I wish all the teams success in this tournament.”

USA head coach Hugh McCutcheon: “I would like to echo the sentiments of the other coaches and congratulate Macao on hosting such a wonderful event here. The USA team is very happy to be competing in the final this year, we’ll have some difficult matches but we will try to compete to the best of our ability and see what happens from there.”

The first round of matches starts with Japan vs USA at 11:00 am, follow by Brazil vs Italy (1:30 pm) and Thailand vs Russia (5:00 pm).  The China vs Serbia match will commence after the Opening Ceremony at 7:10 pm.