Katowice Poland

12 July 2007


I’m part of Volleyball since many years (before as a player and now as a journalist) and I learned how to recognize how teams celebrate at scoring points. Brazilians run and hug each other after each action. Cubans yell aloud, Japaneses rush ceaselessly and Russians remain expressionless! Italians, Polish and French are in between: for all of them it depends on the match. Observing carefully their expressions helps me to understand how determined and motivated they are.
However, this personal process cannot be applied to the US team. Since when the United States started dominating the scene (1980s), they always had a special approach. Most of the world’s teams during rallies are soundless, totally focused on the ball.
The US players keep sharing lots of information with each other. They never stop speaking. Each time the receivers remember their own competence areas, give the setter suggestions about the opponents shift. (Also when the spiker is ready to attack, the receivers still say how is moving the back-row players).
During the break between the scores, they don’t waste time celebrating or moaning. They restart immediately, focusing on the next rally. This special attitude, very pragmatic indeed, gives them the opportunity to widely exploit their talent, which actually has not always been outstanding.
This group, leaded by the head coach Hughes McCutcheon, is the perfect evidence of how it is possible to maximize benefits from this peculiarity: today against France they have played a perfect game indeed.
France? It’s difficult to say something about it. We all had the feeling that they were hardly there.


Why USA won: Right mental approach, perfect strategy, good shape. That’s enough to win against today’s France

Bye bye andrea zorzi

Katowice Poland

11 July 2007


Russia and Bulgaria are the two highest expressions of physical power actually existing on earth. All the athletes are tall, quick, powerful. The fans following the matches in the hall, cannot fully catch the real player’s size, because of the distance.
Only when a “human-size man", (i.e. referee, ball retriever or quick moppers) come close to those giants, everybody can recognize the truly Volleyball players’s hugeness.
The outstanding strength is not always accompanied by an equal technical and tactical talent. It is under everybody’s eyes that Mother Nature actually has been very open-handed with the Bulgarians and the Russians, so that their potentiality is apparently never-ending.
Whenever Bulgaria performs, as it often happens, it appears as the best team in the world but the day after, it is unrecognizable.
Today they have tried to win spiking stronger than the Russians. However, a team where Khamuttskikh (the Russian setter, almost 2 meters tall), seems a dwarf among his team-mate isn’t the right opponent to challenge using power. To beat Russians they should “play” volleyball, with cleverness and cunningness.
The Russians never loose when the opponents play in a plain and simple way: and Bulgarians did so!
Former Soviet Union team prove again to have a unbelievable constrained potentiality. Anyway, since too long the colossal Russians do not win a big international tournament. To win “heavy” medals the strength isn’t enough: intelligence and skills are required. Tomorrow against Brazil, (must win to get semis), the Russians will test their improvements. If Brazil will stop being be a sleepy lion, we will understand if high expectations towards Russians are reasonable or not.

Why Russia won: if opposite hitter and setter play fine, a Volleyball team rarely looses. Poltavsky and Khamuttskikh were outstanding, that’s it

Bye bye andrea zorzi