The Italian national team experienced a volleyball renaissance

The Italian national team, after almost a quarter of a century, regained the title of the winner of the volleyball world championship. In the final of the tournament, which, like the vast majority of international competitions of the year, was taken away from Russia after the start of a military special operation in Ukraine, removing the national team from participation in it, the Italians, who had radically refreshed the squad in recent years, defeated the Poles who won the previous two world championships in four sets on someone else’s site, in Katowice.

This volleyball world championship, which was supposed to be, apparently, the largest sporting event of the year in Russia, but in the end, due to sanctions got Poland with Slovenia, and at the same time lost one of the favorites, of course, slightly lost in status in the light of the removal of the national team, which is always hunting for medals. But its outcome is in any case a curious event.

In Italy, volleyball has long since become a sport adored by the public. Not football, of course, but not too far from it in terms of demand. And in the 1990s, the demand was constantly converted into prizes. The chic Italian team took the gold of the world championships three times in a row in the decade that ended the last century, and its fans could hardly imagine what awaited them after the third success, in 1998. And waited for a long, long period of fruitless attempts to do something grand again.

The Italian national team has always been highly rated, but for almost a quarter of a century it has not achieved truly valuable victories, allowing it to be called the flagship of volleyball – at the world championships, at the Olympics.

Prizes, becoming trendsetters, were taken by Brazilians, Russians, Poles, French, and Italians all the time either stopped a step away from them, or not so rarely suffered crushing failures. Moreover, in the end they also forgot about victories in secondary tournaments, which are full in volleyball: continental championships, the World League, which has transformed into the League of Nations, the World Cup.

The last such breakdown occurred at last year’s Olympics. The Italian team in Tokyo had already retired in the quarterfinals, having failed to cope with the not so highly rated Argentines, but after the disaster, they finally found a way to make a radical transformation.

It consisted in a brazen demolition of the template. Personnel turnover is, in principle, an uncharacteristic feature for volleyball. It is more familiar in it, rather, the stability of the compositions, the stake on experience. And the Italian team in this sense followed the tradition, perhaps more faithfully than all the other giants.

And even a person who suddenly stopped following volleyball competitions for ten years, becoming interested in them again, would easily recognize the Italian team: yes, basically the same players.

However, Ferdinando De Giorgi, appointed after the Olympics as the new coach of the national team, who, as a liaison, won all three of the highest awards of the world championships of the previous “golden” era with her – in 1990, 1994 and 1998, ruthlessly throwing out famous veterans like Ivan Zaitsev from the application, took him to the championship Europe, which took place shortly after the Japanese competition, a detachment of very young players. Most of them had either not been involved in the national team at all before, or played episodic roles. But at the European championship it turned out that these guys – passing Simone Giannelli, forwards Alessandro Michieletto and Daniele Lavia – are already ready to get to the titles, like the brilliant company with De Giorgi in their time.

However, the European Championship could not yet be considered iron proof of the fidelity of a risky strategy. Still, the leading teams treated it as a “consolation” tournament, or something, which ended up on the calendar next to the most important only because of the state of emergency – the coronavirus pandemic that moved the Olympics from 2020. But the world championship, albeit without Russia, has already served as such proof.

In the course of it, the Italian national team, with its amazing volleyball application (in the starting six – no one older than the recognized best player of the tournament Giannelli, who turned 26 a month ago, and Michieletto was only 20 at all) constantly showed the style that De Giorgi instilled in her. It does not have as much academicism, “correctness” as before, but many times more emotions, courage, and the lack of stability is compensated by a huge number of bright game splashes and the ability not to bathe because of failures.

At this World Cup, the Italians did not allow a single misfire, taking over their rivals in all seven meetings and only once having been close to defeat – when they squeezed the French Olympic champions in the quarterfinals on a tie-break. In the semi-finals, the Italian national team went dry in three games against the Slovenes, with whom they suffered terribly in the decisive match of the European Championship a year ago, and in the final in four games they already thought that the third consecutive gold of the world championships would not float away from them, the Poles: there is a game, passed in marathon battles, terrible Americans and Brazilians, and the white-hot stands of the Spodek Arena in Katowice will certainly help.

He was terribly revealing, this match. The Italians gave up the starting set, although they led in the end with a concrete advantage – 21:17. In the second, twice – at the beginning and in the middle – they let the opponents go forward by three points, forcing De Giorgi to take time-outs and, it seemed, endowing the owners of the site with incredible courage, an incredible degree of confidence.

But against the sparkling passion and interesting decisions of the game of the Italian national team, Polish courage and class were still powerless.

The Italian youth, not worrying about other people’s exploits, regained their good mood, saved the second set, and in the next two they did not allow just such powerful Poles for a rather modest line of 20 points scored for such matches.

Alexey Dospekhov