A black page, very black. Of those that are not forgotten. From 2000 onwards the National women’s volleyball team he has never failed to qualify for the Olympics. In all likelihood it won’t happen this time either, because ranking will come to the rescue. But the poor performance will remain indelible in the annals of our volleyball: the lowest point in the last five decades has been reached. And, not least aggravating, those responsible did nothing to prevent the building from collapsingdespite the fact that the cracks had been tangible right from the foundations for some time.
It was decided to do nothing, wait, even purge, effectively leaving an entire team at home, in our opinion better than the one sent out in Lodz. The inevitable and predictable disaster materialized like clockwork. Mazzanti’s cycle had long since ended. After an Olympics well below expectations, the triumph at the 2021 European Championships had strengthened a shaky bench, before a 2022 World Cup in which the group completely fell apart. So much so that Mazzanti himself, a year later, honestly admitted that “at the World Cup I didn’t have the team in hand”.
The story is now known to everyone. Some players have asked for Mazzanti’s dismissal. The Federation took the side of the CT: as a result the protesters ended up out of the national team. In 2023, Italy did not field its best players, but those who (in theory) had not severed relations with the coach. A grotesque situation, now unsustainable: really couldn’t anything be done to fix it when it was still possible? Now, after hitting rock bottom, perhaps we will take action: it wouldn’t be too late to aspire to an Olympics as protagonists.
But a an elegant gesture on Mazzanti’s part would be to admit his own faults for the situation that has arisen, handing in his resignation after failing to directly qualify for the Paris 2024 Games. Italy lost against a second-tier team like Poland: we fell to the bottom, but the one seen in Lodz is not the real national team. This group, in its entirety, can still scare the world. And maybe even rise again in less than twelve months.
Photo: FIVB
2023-09-24 20:52:24
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