Whe doesn’t know it: the ball hits the edge of the net, for a split second it seems unclear which half of the field it will fall into. And then he falls, out of reach for the opponents, in their field. In the masterful game of the Berlin Volleys, director Johannes Tille seems to have perfected the art of the ace. Not only does he serve impressively; he also seems to be able to hit the edge of the net on purpose.
In the third game of the German championship final on Saturday night, he helped his team win the title by once again taking the lead in the first two sets with aces. “I had said that I don’t hit the edge of the net in the game, only in training,” commented the 23-year-old player: “And then I do a net roller ace in the second and third game.”
That’s one of the reasons why the Volleys won 3:1 (25:18, 25:18, 16:25, 27:25) in front of 8,500 spectators in Berlin’s Max-Schmeling-Halle on Saturday evening and with this third win in the final series against VfB Friedrichshafen their 13th German championship. They have caught up with the record champions from Lake Constance. After all three games, Tille was recognized as the best man on the field. Volleys Managing Director Kaweh Niroomand was pleased to say that he had already extended the contract with the player by three years: “He’s a really big win for us and for German volleyball.”
Family Tille as Talent Pool
At the beginning of the season, Tille came to Berlin from France’s second division at the age of 22. Niroomand had had his eye on him for a long time. On the one hand, because Tille took his first steps in first-class volleyball at the VC Olympia in Berlin. On the other hand, because his older brothers Ferdinand and Leonhard have proven in the volleyball league and national team that the Tilles from Mühldorf am Inn are a family talent pool. He played football as a child, says Johannes Tille. But when his brother Ferdinand became a Bundesliga volleyball player at the age of 17, he knew: “I want to do it too.” He was eight years old at the time.
Junge Berliner Garde: Johannes Tille (lr), Timothee Carle, Saso Stalekar, Marek Sotola und Ruben Schott
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Image: dpa
His breakthrough came fourteen years later, when volleyball regular Spaniard Angel Trinidad suffered a metacarpal fracture in a volleyball Champions League game six months ago. Substitute Tille took over as if he had always played at the highest national and international level. And increased. “The finals give me extra motivation,” he said, as if he were amazed at himself: “I jump higher, I hit better. Everything works better in the finals.”
Team captain Ruben Schott said he was “super proud of Hannes”: “I knew he had potential and he’s getting better all the time.” Niroomand goes even further. He sees Tille as a complete player: “A good player, quick as an arrow in defence, has a good serve and, above all, he’s incredibly quick in his head. Now he has to get a chance in the national team as well. They have to pull themselves together and not stick to old patterns.”
Tille, who is just 23 years old, is the outstanding example of what the French champion coach Cédric Énard has achieved in his last year in Berlin: to compensate for the retirement of five veterans of the highest international class with young players who are willing to learn. The 28-year-old Berlin Schott has followed in the footsteps of the Russian Sergej Grankin as a leading player, the young giants Anton Brehme and Marek Sotola, 2.06 and 2.08 meters long and only 23 years old, as well as the only three years older, 2 .14 meter middle blocker Saso Stalekar represent the future of the team.
How Sotola with a powerful smash and how Stalekar with a sovereign block fended off the set balls of the strengthened Friedrichshafener in the fourth set and instead of allowing a tie-break, the points to win the set, game and championship speaks for the fact that the dominance of the Berliners is now with seven championships in a row will continue for a while. Niroomand was asked whether the German championship wouldn’t be boring with such a superior champion. His answer: “Success is never boring.”
The ambition and demands of the master maker reach far beyond Berlin. The league’s decision, born out of necessity, to allow four clubs to be promoted in order to finally get back to a championship round of twelve, connects Niroomand with the claim: “You have to see it as an opportunity to develop in four or five years like Giesen and Lüneburg did. And the top five must also take a qualitative step forward.”
In this context he criticized TSV Haching Munich, one of the top teams in Germany at the time of the sponsor Generali: “This season Haching was here with only eight or nine people. That’s not a good role model.” If that’s not a good sign: as much as the Berliners work hard for their titles, the weakness of the competition annoys them.
