Volleyball(s)

Yesterday I was in the company of around 14500 other people filling the excellent Palalottomatica arena in Rome watching the Italian team play Russia in the final of the European Volley Championship, which was wonderfully organized by the cities of Rome and Belgrade (kudos to them).

The final went more or less this way: the first set was exciting and well balanced and Italy won 25-22. At the beginning of the second set Russia started playing it the physical way, and since their shortest man could take our libero for a walk on leash it was easy for them to downplay us by 10 points. Same story in the third set, with Russia winning a desolating 25-14. At that point they were only missing a set and I was starting to have a deja-vu since the other match we played with them only 4 days ago ended 3-1 with us winning the first set and then loosing three straight.

After all, this is what we've got used to by following sports like football, where the average Italian match in the last 22 years has resembled more the Berlin love parade than a sports event.

But I forgot that we're talking about volleyball, a game that is usually played by people with balls. It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing your national team outplay so overwhelmingly the much more physical Russians. The final tiebreak that we forced them to after an imperious third set was so one-sided that it felt like a rehearsal with a junior team.

The Italian coach Montali, when asked what the reason for their success had been, explained it with three words: "work, work, work". May that be an example for all Italians.