Tokyo (Japan)

The technical Volleyball language divides the court in 6 different areas.

In Italy we call the six areas as follows:

P1 - P2 - P3 - P4 – P5 – P6.


On the right you can see where the different positions are.


The letter P belongs to “Palleggiatore” which in Italian means setter. When a team is in P1, means that, at the beginning of the rally, the setter has to be in that specific position. The numbering from P1 to P6 follow the anticlockwise rotation.


Today, I discovered that the only country that doesn’t use this system is the United States. They follow the clockwise numeration. They also start numbering from our P1 called R1 (Rotation 1) but then, our P6 is their R2 and so on.

I introduced this information to better explain the tendency of Khamuttskikh (the Russian setter) in P3 and P6.
The Bulgarian statisticians found that in those two rotations, Khamuttskikh has a clear tendency to set many times Quick (a front row attack) or Pipe (a back row attack).

Although the Bulgarian block was very watchful of Russian quick attacks, the two Russian middle blockers, Alexander Volkov and Alexey Kuleshov, scored 21 points in total: the first killed 12 attacks, 1 block and 1 ace and the second 9 attacks and 3 blocks.
This is a good achievement, especially comparing with the 13 Bulgarian points won by the two middle blockers Evgeni Ivanov and Krasimir Gaydarski.

But the Bulgarian swing hitters Kaziyski, Aleksiev, Nikolov and Konstantinov, who replaced Aleksiev during the fourth set to exploit his passing skills better, played better than Russian side attacker.

Moreover, the Bulgaria setter Zhekov seemed more confident than in the previous matches. In the last two days, Martin Stoev (the coach) and Konstantinov (the captain) talked long with the setter, convincing him the all the Bulgarian team players trust in his skill. This is exactly what the young setter needs: feeling the team supporting him.

Last but not least, I think that Salparov, the libero, performance was outstanding. I’m not supported by the statistics (he finished with a poor 41% positive passing average) but in the fifth set he succeeded to “save” many very quick services. Actually, the average is low but in this case the numbers don’t say the deep truth.

During the press conference after the match, Poltavskiy, the Russian opposite hitter, blamed himself for the defeat. He scored 20 points finishing with 49% of kill attack average (so and so!).

Immediately afterwards, the coach Alekno upheld his spiker, saying that a player never can be considered responsible for a team defeat.

As a matter of fact, Bulgarian planned blocking Poltavskiy leaving a slight space on the line. Many times Khamuttskikh set a little short to the right of the net, that means that the ball doesn’t arrive close to the antenna and hitting along the line is impossible. The result is that Poltavskiy seems responsible for many errors but the responsibility has to be shared with the setter.

And now I beg your pardon, because two days ago I betted on Russia and I was wrong: when I’ll stop to stake it will be always too late.

Bye bye andrea zorzi