On Tuesday, the European Championship of Women Volleyball was opened in the Arena of Verona. 8800 spectators came to the ancient amphitheater. The Italians won 3-0 against Romania. The German volleyball players watched the spectacle together in the team hotel in Düsseldorf and thought: Wow!
“That was impressive,” said Anna Pogany on Wednesday. “A moment of goosebumps,” said captain Lena Stigrot. The 28-year-old plays for a club in the Lombard town of Busto Arsizio and exchanged messages with the Italians after the game. They wrote that it was quite windy. “It must have been difficult to play,” said Stigrot.
The German volleyball players start their European Championship group this Thursday. There is no ancient amphitheater in Düsseldorf. They play their five group games in a Castello, which is Italian and means castle. But as spectacular as the location sounds, it’s not. The Castello is a conventional sports hall in the south of Düsseldorf. 3,300 spectators can be seated here and it will be packed when the game starts against Greece. “The hall is great,” says Anna Pogany. National coach Vital Heynen goes even further: “The hall is perfect,” says the 54-year-old Belgian. The spectators are close, the mood will be good, and with this support the German women want to finish at least second in their group of six behind the superpower Turkey. Second, they probably won’t face Serbia or Poland in the round of 16 when it comes to the knockout stages in Brussels. “The quarter-finals would be a great result for us,” said Heynen.
Open detailed view
Leads the DVV team as captain: Lena Stigrot.
(Foto: Steve Cho Kyewoong/Penta Press / Imago)
It’s been ten years since a women’s European Championship took place in Germany. Back then, the hosts made it to the final in Berlin with players like Margareta Kozuch, Christiane Fürst, Maren Brinker and Lenka Dürr, as well as Italian coach Giovanni Guidetti, where they lost 3-1 to Russia. They had already lost the final at the EM 2011 (2:3 against Serbia). After 2013, German volleyball players did not even reach the semi-finals of four European championships.
“Volleyball is an honest sport,” says national coach Heynen, meaning that the world rankings are a good indicator of the balance of power on the field. According to the world rankings, Turkey (No. 1) should be European champions, defending champions Italy (No. 3), Serbia (No. 5) and Poland (No. 7) would have the best chances of winning a medal. Germany (No. 11) might have to settle for the quarter-finals, but Heynen says: “If we go out earlier but played well – that would be okay!”
The national coach jokes about the vacuum in the association: “I don’t have a boss at the moment – that’s nice.”
Every single victory at the European Championships is important because the Olympic places are awarded based on the world rankings. Germany is in a good position eleventh. Heynen doesn’t want to name a result goal for the European Championship, but rather an emotional one: “I want the players to look good; it should be fun to watch them.” The coach is annoyed that they won’t reach the big audience via free TV channels. The European Championship can be viewed online at sportdeutschland.tv for five euros per game or 15 euros for the tournament. “In Germany,” says the Belgian, “there’s only football – up to the fourth division.” But in volleyball you need public attention above all.
Heynen also finds the sporting external impact more relevant than the currently meager media response due to the vacuum at the top of the association. President René Hecht and his three vice-presidents recently resigned. Heynen is demonstratively laconic about such association chaos: “I don’t have a boss at the moment – that’s nice,” he jokes. Outside attacker Hanna Orthmann, who plays in Istanbul, isn’t particularly worried about the association disputes either. “Of course you would like more stability,” she says, “but that doesn’t affect our game.”
Orthmann was 14 years old when the last European Championships at home took place in Germany. She attended preliminary round games in Halle/Westphalia and got intoxicated as a spectator in the wings. Now standing on the field and being able to experience such an atmosphere as a player, she finds it just as “cool” as Lena Stigrot and Anna Pogany, who watched the European Championship games on television at the time, but who, as young Vilsbiburg Bundesliga players and prospective national players, were emotional were more involved. So now all three are playing in front of their home EM audience.
Who knows if the German volleyball players will be allowed to play in a setting like the Arena in Verona. Pogany had their most unusual volleyball game in the tennis stadium in Halle/Westphalia, Stigrot in front of thousands of spectators in the Mannheim Arena and Orthmann in Brazil in a semi-open hall into which the pigeons fluttered. Something special like a game like this in an ancient arena is not that great in volleyball, a sport in which the ball can easily be blown away. In their castle in Düsseldorf, the German players want to be able to control everything.
