by Doriano Rabotti
If an alarm clock was needed, let’s hope that we heard its sound distinctly in Italy. For heaven’s sake, in sport you only win on the pitch and never on paper, but after a qualifying round downhill, the Italian volleyball players tasted their first fears yesterday, and the important thing is that the lesson has been understood. Italy is clearly stronger than Spain, but the Spanish have found a way, especially with the serve, to put Italy’s game in crisis for two sets. It was a round of 16 match, nothing comparable to the matches that will decide which teams will play in the final, yet Italy struggled a lot, even risking losing the first set of its European Championship.
In the end, the result went well for the team that Mazzanti had lined up with Antropova as starter and Paola Egonu always used in the double substitution. But for the avoidance of doubt, the problem was certainly not the choice of the opposite because the blues struggled in reception. In the end they won 3-0 (25-23, 25-22, 25-19), finally relaxing in the third set also thanks to Antropova who made it clear why Mazzanti knows he can rely on her.
At this point, the Azzurri will still have to challenge France (who beat Romania 3-1) in Florence on Tuesday evening at 9.15 pm. It’s an appointment that you can’t go wrong in order to reach the semi-finals on Saturday in Brussels, where Italy will probably find Santarelli’s Turkey, the real litmus test for the renewed Italy.
Tomorrow, however, the journey of De Giorgi’s Azzurri will begin, who will make their debut in Bologna against Belgium and yesterday received a visit from Simone Anzani, the centre-back of whom this group is a leader, but at the moment he is sidelined due to heart problems. In the next few days he will undergo ablation surgery to resolve them and return to play.
