The smiles, which characterized much of the summer journey of an Italy eliminated in the VNL quarter-finals, fourth at the European Championships at home, not qualified in a very affordable group for the Paris Games, have (finally) disappeared from the faces of the Italians, of the technical staff and, probably, also of those in the federation who endorsed all the choices that led to this total failure. Because there was little to smile about even before.
Because with smiles they made people believe that they were having fun on the field, outside, on the bus, in the hotel, even if the “reels” and “stories” disappeared from social media, accused when the bronze at the World Championships seemed like a disaster and disappeared with the result to lose everything you could. In volleyball, as in any other sport, you have fun when you win and here everyone did their best to break a toy that just needed a little fixing, with a pinch of patience.
The first loser is Davide Mazzanti. He put his face to it, he wanted it demonstrate that you could win even without someone who knocked down 40 balls per game, he didn’t have the courage to let two players play together who could ensure 60 ground balls per game and now those who had the courage to make this “very risky” move celebrate and the blue coach may still be smiling because the instructions were to always smile, even when the world was collapsing on a team that was too psychologically weak, too little continuous, with obvious structural deficits and without the right international depth to achieve even minimal objectives, which could have been a podium at the European Championships and an Olympic qualification well within reach.
Yes it was built an important bonus, the blue coach, with two world medals, the European gold and the victory in VNL but the situation was already clear a year ago. His the choice not to have a relationship with the players led to moves and counter-moves by international espionage and objectively Mazzanti gave the impression in the most difficult moment of not wanting to change course. He was the only leader and those who loved him had to follow him, without too much discussion. Egonu’s management is a treatise on how not to manage an athlete of that caliber and can easily be used as an example in future coaching courses. You can’t call an absolute star and make him sit on the bench and then call him when you realize that perhaps he is indispensable (sending all the members of the team into a tailspin) e if you don’t call her (apparently by choice but the push had come from all sides) you risk: Mazzanti took the risk and lost, exhausting all the bonuses available. Mazzanti, let’s be clear, is a very high level coach (what he did with Italy will go down in the annals as one of the most flourishing periods of our national team) but, for a year now, it has been there wrong person in the wrong place, supported by other wrong people in the wrong place: with these assumptions it could only end badly.
They lost the players because both those who were there and those who weren’t there played a role in this massacre. Starting from those who appeared before the president of Fipav a year ago to shut the coach’s head, up to the last of those who were unable to beat a match between the USA and Poland, who were defeated by the Netherlands in the final for third place at the European Championships, which were beaten twice by Turkey, first in the VNL and then in the semi-final of the continental tournament, taking Italy back six or seven decades in international values, when, since 2018, the blue had been protagonists at all levels. We have witnessed excellent exclusions, chats with locker room groups that were widely flaunted, players who first withdrew themselves, then declared themselves available for the call, escapes without particular explanations from the Italian retreat, withdrawals due to injuries that apparently did not seem so serious. A sampling of events resulting from a schizophrenic environment which left everyone, fans and professionals, speechless, almost in disbelief of what was happening in one of the strongest national teams in the world, a “unicum” that we hope will turn into a “one-off” from which everyone will emerge with broken bones.
Broken bones from the orthopedic department even on the upper floors of the Fipav headquarters. When the results don’t come, when in a team you realize that the locker room is boiling, when the prospects are anything but rosy in terms of relationships (and everyone knew this) in the world of sport, from football to field hockey, up to women’s volleyball, the reasoning is very simple: do we change the coach or do we change the players? A rhetorical question that doesn’t even need to be answered. In Fipav the answer was the wrong one. Out (or in with marginal roles) the players which had highlighted a widespread malaise in the environment. Result? The environment has never been calm and the inevitable controversies over choices incomprehensible to most have further undermined the 81 square meters where Italy played its most important matches. The mines have done their job and it would be good for those who contributed to spreading them, perhaps even involuntarily, to step aside so that in this situation the responsibilities are not only those of those who take the field or sit on the bench.
Fivb photo
2023-09-24 21:53:42
#Womens #volleyball #lost #Lodz #Italians #Mazzanti #Federation
