Katowice (Poland)

14 July 2007


Today Brazil has adopted accurate serving strategy: during the whole match they kept on serving on Winiarsky (polish swing hitter) and never changed that choice. Only Gustavo and Andrè (with a powerful jumping serve) sometimes failed the target, because in this case it is very difficult to be powerful and precise.

Moreover, Michal Winiarsky is a high-quality receiver!
Therefore, which is the reason underneath this tactic option? Nothing better than going to the mix areas (where the journalists can speak to the athletes) and ask the Brazilians why they had made this choice.
Dante (Brazilian spiker) answered first: “Before the match we have decided to serve on Winiarsky because when he is involved in reception he attacks less than usual”.
Then I met Bernardinho and I asked the same question. “We have studied the Poland team average – he replied - discovering that, when Winiarsky is involved in passing, his attacks are actually less efficient than usual. 
Being under pressure in each rally, he gets tired and everything becomes more difficult for him”.
It seems obvious and simple: serving on weaker receiver is not always the best strategy. Sometimes there are specific reasons that justify odd tactics choices.

Brazil has got the seventh World League final in row playing one more time with great consistency and taking advantage of every single chances.
Poland lost a great opportunity to beat Brazil today, since the South American team’s performance hasn’t ever been at its best. I believe that Poland suffers a kind of constraint towards Giba and the other team mates.

Why Brasil won: after today's match Sergio (the Brazilian Libero) told me: "whenever I'm playing, I think of my family and I remember where I came from!".

andrea zorzi

Katowice (Poland)

14 July 2007


USA and Russia represent two opposite attitudes in volleyball world.
Ex-Soviet Union has been volleyball’s cradle since 1920s, when this sport landed in Europe from USA.
Then URSS has dominated volley world until the 80s, building such a strong model tracked by all the Russian coaches since then. They neededn’t invent any further techniques: keeping on working using the ones developed in those glorious years was, actually, pretty enough. As a result, Soviet Union could always count on several good players, skilful and well trained.

On the other hand, since the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, US tried to walk new paths to overturn that status quo. Having no strong past to count on, US dared to invent thoroughly, relying only on few professional volleyball players.
Doug BEAL, the coach who shaped the US team and led it to the victory of two Olympic gold medals (1984 and 1988) and one World Champions gold medal (1988), modified the previous passing system using only two player to receive the opponent’s serve. Moreover, having not so many skilled athletes available, he had to find the right pattern suitable to that players. These two different schools, the Russian and the US ones, are today still recognizable.
United States team feature consists in adapting and solving, an attitude that created out-of-standard players. Some of their technical abilities come from beach volley (i.e. hold setting and peculiar digging technique).
To improve their individual skills, the US players prefer training more through global than analytical drills.

The Russians focus their attention on technique, instead, following very definite models and shaping very conventional athletes.

In this Final Round the two teams differ in value so much from each other that Russia could easily won and, despite it lost only one set, it was able to control the whole match. The peculiar way of the US to maximum exploit their potentialities turned out to be not enough to succeed.

Why Russia won: Russia served better, passed better, spiked much better and blocked better. USA couldn’t win counting only on digging better

Bye bye andrea zorzi