Ningbo (China)

It’s time to celebrate the gold medal of the Dutch team.

The two first words Selinger said after the match were unbelievable and magic: “We have been working hard for the last two years, living in the gym for 360 days each year. I knew that working hard would have paid off. We improved our game level and now we are playing a fine Volleyball. Competing at this level makes possible to win or even to lose, but probably we’ll get more victories than defeats. We are very happy to be actually part of the top world team’s family”.

An ought explanation on Selinger’s statement, especially about the meaning of their “hard work”. Two years ago, in Holland, a fulltime program started. All young players of the Dutch Senior Women’s team joined the Premier League team of Martinus. With the main sponsor DELA the team was enabled to participate at important international tournaments on the road to Beijing 2008.

Are the orange team’s amazing improvements due to a different way of planning the national teams schedule?

Almost all other national teams have to find a compromise with the club teams of the players. Therefore, none of them can train together for the entire year.
I asked the coaches of the other national teams if they would like to spend so much time working together, but the answer was: “not the whole year. We would like to have more time than that we have now, of course, but training together all the entire year could be too much to keep the right motivation”.

The way Holland team followed, though successful, shouldn’t be considered the best or unique way since several different roads to the victory are obviously possible. But what impressed everybody was the utterly different Dutch road.
In one month we will surely know if Holland team is part of the top world team family. In European Championship (20-30 October) there will be two places to participate at the World Cup in Japan: the first but not the last chance to qualify for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Every single team is strongly fighting for that.


Why Holland won: the Dutch players showed a great ability to change pace when necessary. Powerful, smart, patient, enthusiastic, resolute. Today they had to face the Russian high and thick block. Thus they forced the tall opponent players to run to defend lots of tips (a little touch that drop right behind the block). The rallies lasted longer and often Russian made the mistakes first.

Why Poland won: during all the World Grand Prix Final Round, Poland performed adequately only in serve and block but very poorly in the rest of the fundamentals. But today both their attack and defence have been definitively enhanced and at last the Polish team regained the right team spirit.
About the very bad Italian game: two days ago I wrote: “I’m often surprised by women's game progress and I feel almost confused in front of such a wide range of opportunities”. The “wide range of opportunities” is even wider than I would have imagined!

Why China won: the match was ever under the control of the Chinese team. Brazil has been fighting to climb the third podium’s step, but their motivation vanished fast. The home-team easily overcame the opponents. I cannot give any tactical or technical explanation. The difference was too big to try to analyze this match just looking at percentages or single details.


Bye bye andrea zorzi