Ningbo (China)

During the last two matches (Holland-Italy and China-Poland), I saw lots of different expressions on players’s faces. I could recognize happiness, sadness, enjoyment, anger and even fear. But I was impressed by Chaine Staelens’s expression, Holland swing hitter.

From the very beginning she had an extremely suffering face. A little later I discovered that there were tears in her eyes. She was walking with a limp, showing clear signs of pain anytime she put the weight on her left knee.
Avital Selinger, Dutch team’s head coach, gave her a short break whenever possible. Chaine Staelens walked out to the bench, staring at her knee. But after a few minutes she had to go back to the court.
There was an amazing difference between the smiling faces of her team mates and her suffering expression. At the end Selinger confirmed to me that Chaine Staelens had been injured two weeks ago during a match against China (or USA, he didn’t remember exactly).

Avital said: “If we want to win we have to overcome the problems and injuries are part of the game. We are in a sharp blade, where tumbling is very easy. We are improving our game level and our dream (Olympic qualification) seems trustworthy more than ever. I know that is dangerous but I have no other choice!”

His face was very sympathetic, not the slightest hint of harshness was there.




Why Holland won: Orange players never gave up, not even a single rally. They were well placed in difense and gave many opportunities to Manon Flier, their opposite hitter, who scored 30 points!

Why China won: both teams played making both several mistakes (30 Poland and 25 China) and it isn’t easy to recognize any tactic due to those many errors.

Bye bye andrea zorzi

Ningbo (China)


Volleyball’s reporters, coaches and players often use the definition “Russian’s style” .
This expression is suitable both for women and men, but today I’ll focus only on women.
We immediately imagine tall athletes, very powerful but slow and technically not fully developed. is this actually the condition?

Let’s start from the height.
Russian team is the tallest in this 2007 Grand Prix Final Round. The team’s average is 189,7 centimetres (by the way, Italian team is the shortest: 181,3 cm).
Brazil’s height average is 185,8 (2nd position behind Russia), 3,8 cm lower than today’s opponents. But if we look at the height of these two starting six (I haven’t calculated Libero) we discover that the difference greatly increases, reaching 7,8 centimetres (Russia 193, 5 and Brazil 185,7)!!!

Let’s continue focussing on technical skills which are distinctive of the Russian style.
Despite the height, Russian players are quite good in reception (they have time to place themselves into the right position). The setter can rely on an good enough reception (not worst nor better than other teams). Therefore, it is difficult to understand why the two Russian setters (Marina and Svetlana Akulova) play such a predictable game.
They set the ball very high (therefore making it slow), so that the opponent team has time to block at best and more chances to dig.

Let’s finish having a look at Russian dig: it could be much better.
Usually Russians have a fairly good ball control, which rapidly decreases as soon as they have to move quickly. Nevertheless, above all, they haven’t the right approach. They don’t like digging!
They don’t make the slightest attempt to get involved, they rather hope not to get at all.

Why Russia won: because there are excellent attackers, blockers and servers. Russian players hit the ball where nobody can reach, passing often over the opponent’s block.

Bye bye andrea zorzi