Translated material
First flight
The Russian volleyball team can prepare to fly to the semi-finals
In order to 99% guarantee a place in the semi-finals of the European Championship, our volleyball team had to beat the Italians in three sets. The Russians managed to cope with this rather difficult task - 3:0 (25:23, 25:21, 25:21). All that remains is to wait a couple of games in the next match Bulgaria - Holland (result - 3:1) and finally make sure that under no circumstances, even the most incredible scenarios, Bagnoli's charges will not fall below second place in Istanbul Group F. That is, our team was the first in the tournament to secure a place in the Final Four in Izmir.The Russians have not played with any of their opponents as often as they have with the Italians. Yesterday's meeting of the teams in Istanbul was already the 43rd in a row, and our volleyball players won their 23rd victory. The match, which was initially categorized as a game of increased difficulty, suddenly became interesting only to our team. The Italians, who had been meticulously building their lineup all summer, suddenly found themselves completely untenable in Istanbul and, without any special options, lost not only to the Serbs and Bulgarians, but also to the not-so-demanding Dutch.
This happened after our team, having played a great match with the Serbs, went to the hotel, supposedly to prepare for a battle with an opponent who was determined for the last battle. But in the end we got an opponent without much motivation. True, sometimes this even complicates life, since the enemy plays loosely and uses players who have been in reserve and therefore not very well studied. Among those, the Italians had none other than Euro 2005 MVP Alberto Chizolla, who joined the team too late, and Azzurra squad coach Andrea Anastasi preferred more accomplished performers. It is interesting that the MVP of Euro 2007, Russian Semyon Poltavsky, also does not make it into the main team of his team.
Anastasi has carte blanche from his national federation to prepare for the home world championship in 2010, and he has the right to indulge in any experiments. Therefore, possible moves by the Squadra Azzurra coach were expected with caution. Daniele Bagnoli also found himself in an interesting situation. It was his first time playing at the national level against his country's national team. In Italy, he, the most titled club coach, was stubbornly not seen as a coach of the national team. There was not only carte blanche here, there was no talk of even the slightest chance.
In the tactical battle of the two Italian mentors, Bagnoli succeeded, as you can easily guess from the score on the scoreboard. And he was also the one who surprised us with the lineup. His decision to leave team captain Sergei Tetyukhin in reserve, releasing Alexander Kosarev from the first minutes, seemed very unexpected. This was seen as both a certain challenge (they say, it’s a pity to waste Tetyukhin’s priceless strength on you), and complete confidence in a positive result.
At first, it seemed that this personnel decision could backfire on us, the Italians started so quickly. The gap in favor of the opponent grew by leaps and bounds and reached a seemingly insurmountable 13:20 for men's volleyball. This is where the depth of our squad came into play. First, with the help of a double substitution, we managed to reduce the gap to 18:20, and at the very end of the set, Semyon Poltavsky came out brilliantly to serve.
Having missed an obvious victory in the opening game, the Italians realized that they were faced with an opponent who was clearly too tough for them today. And our team did not tempt fate any further and confidently controlled the course of the remaining two games.
Today's match with the Bulgarians cannot in any way affect not only the list of semi-finalists, but even the composition of the pairs. The winners of the group tournaments in Izmir and Istanbul will naturally be separated, but their opponents will be determined by a draw. So a repeat match between Russia and Bulgaria is possible with a 50% probability. There is a lot to think about from a strategic and psychological point of view.