Head coach of Russian women's volleyball team Giovanni Caprara blamed the negative attitude of her players after the Athens silver medalist lost 3-1 to Italy on Saturday morning.

When coming to the question if the morning competition schedule has affected the team's performances, the Italian raised voices at the after-match press conference, saying there is a time difference problem, but other foreign teams also have to adapt themselves to the early schedule.

"The start time is not only early for us but for Italy too, but there is a different mentality with Russian teams regarding early matches as they tend to have an issue with fatigue," said Caprara.

"I have to persuade them and work hard to overcome this mentality and be prepared for tough matches, but it seems that I fought here alone. It's an issue of attitude," he said.

The coach cited another example of the players' fatigue-fear attitude in preparation for the Games.

"Recently we played three warm-up matches against Poland and afterwards all the players complained they were tired. Fatigue is a big issue which we must resolve."

With four Olympic golds and five silvers in hand, Russia is regarded as one of the title favorites. Caprara took the reign of the team in 2005 and led an awe-inspiring squad to win the 2006 World Championship in Tokyo. However, the Russians surprisingly failed to qualify for the 2007 World Cup and the 2008 World Grand Prix.

"We didn't participate in the Grand Prix competition before we came here and so we expected some difficulties. This proved to be true," said Caprara.

"We had some problems in the third set with defence and positioning. There was also a lack of concentration from the players. Italy took advantage of this in the third and fourth sets," he said.

In response to the coach's dissatisfaction, Russia's captain Marina Sheshenina said there might be misunderstanding.

"It was the first match so of course it was important. I felt some nerves. I think we played well at the beginning, but our defence was not good enough," said Sheshenina. "We had been playing hard and we will try the best at the rest matches."

Russia will next face Monday even stronger Brazil, who scored straight set win over Algeria also on Saturday morning.

Twelve women's teams are divided into two groups in the preliminary round of the Olympic tournament in Beijing that run through Aug. 9-17. Italy is grouped with Algeria, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia and Serbia in Pool B while defending champion China is with Cuba, Japan, Poland, the United States and Venezuela in Pool A. The knockout stage runs from Aug. 19 to 23.

(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2008)