2013 🇨🇳 China vs USA 🇺🇸 🏐 Women Indoor Volleyball 🏐 FIVB World Grand Prix

2013 was the beginning of new Olympic cycle. Many teams with many experiened players retired and it's a year to select and observe new players performance preparing for 2016 Rio Olympic. In 2013, World Grand Prix expand to 20 teams to participate and 4 teams played in one pool (Tons of weak teams in this edition). After 3 weeks preliminary round, top 5 plus Japan (host) play in final round by round robin to decide the champion.
Final round held in Sapporo in Japan during 28Aug-1Sep. Six teams including Brazil, China, Serbia, Japan, Italy & USA. Each team played for 5 matches and Brazil won their opponents all by 3:0! As said, many teams used lots of new players and test their best forms. Brazil remained 4-5 core players from 2008 & 2012 gold medal squad.
Post Match Commentary :
In 2013, Lang Ping was appointed as head coach. She was China team coach during 1995-1998 and USA coach during 2005-2008. Many people saw hope when Lang Ping return. Led by Lang Ping, China got gold medal in 2015, 2016 & 2019, silver medal in 2014 & bronze medal in 2018. In 2013, the team remained lots of old players from 2012 Olympic but only 3 remained until 2016 Olympic - #2 Zhu Ting (19yo, 1.98m), #11 Xu Yunli (26yo, 1.95m) & #12 Hui Ruoqi (22yo, 1.92m). Kiraly appointed as head coach since 2013. USA with many new players. Old players included #1 Alisha Glass (25yo, 1.84m). #10 Kristin Hildebrand (28yo, 1.85m) scored 10 points. #15 Kelly Murphy (24yo, 1.88m) got 11 points. China super star #2 played not well in Day 1 but she in-shape in this match. She scored 23 points with 51% (20/39) attack success rate. USA made 18 mistales and attack rate lower than China. After this tournament, USA with old players return.