Translated material
Personal comfort
At the disastrous World Cup, Verbov and Kuleshov received prizes for the best in role
The final of the World Championship among men's teams that ended in Japan turned out to be not at all as intriguing as four years ago, when Brazil defeated the Russian team led by Gennady Shipulin only in the fifth game. Yesterday the South Americans easily dealt with the Poles - 3:0 (25:12, 25:22, 25:17). Two decades later, the Bulgarians received bronze, repeating the achievement of the 1986 national team. In the match for third place they beat Serbia and Montenegro - 3:1 (22:25, 25:23, 25:23, 25:23).The Russians, who failed the tournament under the leadership of the Serbian Zoran Gajic, consoled themselves with a victory in the game for seventh place with the hosts of the World Cup - 3:1 (25:18, 22:25, 25:18, 25:17), and a couple more spoons of honey in the bottomless ointment our volleyball players received at the official closing ceremony. Alexey Verbov and Alexey Kuleshov were awarded individual prizes as the strongest players in their roles in the tournament. Libero Verbov has the best comprehensive indicator for actions in defense and reception, Kuleshov is in first place in the list of those who scored the most points on average per game due to blocking.
Four years ago, under the leadership of the same Shipulin, whom everyone has to remember with nostalgia after the failure of Gayich exclusively in superlatives, the Russians won the World League final against the Brazilians. Since then, the South Americans have not given up a single title at the most important world competitions. Four times in a row they took the highest step of the podium at the annual World League, won the 2003 World Cup and the 2005 Grand Champions Cup.
If the Brazilians had individual defeats, it was only in continental competitions, and even then only minor ones, when reservists entered the battle. But the “yellow-greens” won the 2005 South American Championship, which counts towards the world rankings, and in the new classification of national teams, which the International Volleyball Federation will publish this week, Brazil will have the maximum possible number of points. Just a few years ago this was unrealistic, because the overall rating also took into account the results of performances at youth and junior world championships. Now the FIVB maintains two classifications separately, and among reserve teams the first place belongs to Russia.
The victories of our under-21 and under-19 teams at last year’s world championships, the unconditional success at the 2006 European Youth Championship in Kazan, the individual prizes of Verbov and Kuleshov in Japan indicate that Russian volleyball has inexhaustible reserves and is generally on the right track. ways. But the choice of the “steering” of the national squad turned out to be wrong. Recently, the personnel policy and individual coaching moves of Gayich have caused sincere bewilderment among a number of specialists.
The results of the team’s performance in the Land of the Rising Sun will still be the subject of investigation in the All-Russian Volleyball Federation, but for now it’s worth remembering what happened in the so-called “related” team sports - men’s basketball and handball, when national squads collapsed at major tournaments. The eighth-place finishes of basketball players at the 2003 and 2005 European Championships led to the immediate resignation of Sergei Elevich and Sergei Babkov, respectively. A similar result of the handball masters at the 2005 World Championship forced the executive committee of the Russian Handball Union to quickly return Vladimir Maksimov to the post of head coach, and recognize the activities of Anatoly Drachev in this capacity as unsatisfactory. If Gayich's resignation does take place (it is unlikely that seventh place is fundamentally different from eighth), I would like the vacant position to be filled on a competitive basis and to a reasonably permissible degree, publicly and openly. Not, of course, like in basketball, when Elevich's candidate program was published in specific details on the Internet, but at least in the same way as they did last year in Poland - constantly informing the public about the emergence of candidates and the key points of their action plan.