• Submitted by: manso
• Sports
• 10 / 11 / 2010

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AFP. Brazil beat Cuba for world volleyball title AFP –ROME (AFP) – Brazil's men won the World Volleyball Championships for the third time in a row on Sunday as they beat Cuba in straight sets 25-22, 25-14, 25-22 in the final here.

The surprisingly one-sided victory for the favourites continued their near-monopoly on trophies in international competition over the last eight years.

Brazil have won 15 out of the last 17 major international tournaments, missing out only on the Olympic Games and World League in 2008 since landing the World Championships in 2002.

Only Italy before them in the 1990s have won three world championships in a row.

However, despite their success, top scorer Vissoto was not getting carried away.

"I don't know if we're the best team in history but what I do know is that we play with a lot of heart, we love Brazil, we're like warriors," he told AFP.

"What's really good is that we've changed a lot of players over all these years without our level dropping.

"Our system is incredible. We've got a complete team with young players with lots of talent and older ones who bring experience.

"I hope we'll know how to maintain this level for a long time to come.

"Today, experience made the difference, Cuba are a great team."

Brazil also gained revenge on the error-prone Cubans for a defeat in the first pool stage of the competition.

It was also vindication for Brazil's controversial 3-0 loss to Bulgaria in the second stage of the pool competition when a weakened team was well below par and in losing that match avoided Cuba in the final pool stage.

Here, though, they were simply too good for the Cubans, who racked up a suicidal 27 errors to just 14 from Brazil, who nonetheless needed four match-points to secure the victory.

The first two sets followed a similar pattern early on as Brazil came out of the blocks firing while Cuba took too long to get into their grove.

In the first Brazil quickly established a 9-3 advantage and they maintained that gap until the scores reached 20-14.

However, Cuba then rallied briefly, winning five out of six points to close to 21-19 - but the favourites weren't going to let their lead slip and they closed it out 25-22.

The second was an almost identical story in the beginning as Brazil raced 7-1 ahead.

This time Cuba's response was almost immediate as they hit back to 8-5 but they then paid for a series of errors as Brazil steadily ran away with the set.

By the end of the second set, Cuba had already made more than double their opponents' mistakes, with 20 to just nine, although the difference in the second set alone was 13-4.

The third set was a different story with Cuba competitive from the off this time, taking a 3-1 lead before Brazil pulled them back to 5-5.

They traded blows until Cuba's Yoandy Leal made a mistake that handed Brazil's Murillo an easy spike to give the champions a 14-12 lead.

Leal and then Wilfredo Leon -- at 17 the youngest player in the tournament -- both missed spikes, giving Brazil a 16-12 lead that they would not relinquish.

Although they stumbled at 24-19, top scorer Vissoto put away the winning spike to seal the title.

Earlier in the day, Serbia beat hosts Italy 3-1 to take the bronze medal.

By Barnaby Chesterman Barnaby Chesterman – 1 hr 32 mins ago

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101010/sp_wl_afp/volleymenworld_2010101021...