Belarus, Japan, Russia, Hungary into quarters at table tennis worlds
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Belarus, Japan, Russia and Hungary reached the men's quarter-finals on Thursday at the 50th World Team Table Tennis Championships in Moscow.
Team of Belarus, led by veteran Vladimir Samsonov, finished the contest first by claiming an easy win over Poland 3-0.
But the team will face Chinese paddlers in the quarterfinals on Friday.
"We qualify for the quarter-finals, which is already a great result. Tomorrow we will be relaxed," said the 40-year-old Belarussian player Evgeni Shetinin. "We do not have any illusion regarding our chance against team of China, but we would like to show high quality games. We still have a lot of strength left."
Alexander Petkevich, head coach of Belarussian men's team, expressed satisfaction over the team's performance.
"It was a very easy match. I am very pleased with Schetinin's play today. The match against the Chinese will, clearly, be much more difficult," he said.
As for the other men's teams, Japan beat Austira 3-0 and will challenge HongKong, China, the next day. Russia subdued Czech Republic 3-1, waiting for a hard battle against Germany. Hungary won the chance to play with South Korea by overcoming Sweden 3-2.
"I don't know what went wrong. We were just not lucky. We had our chances, but we made mistakes at the most important times. Our opponents were playing without pressure and they did well," Swedish paddler Jens Lundqvist said when talking about their performance in the knockout competition.
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