After a very fierce but victorious match between the Polish national team and Serbia 3:1 (26:28, 25:15, 36:34, 25:17), the last quarterfinal of this year’s European Volleyball Championships was played in Bari, Italy. And the co-hosts of the tournament, the Italians, took part in it. The rival of the world and European champions was the unpredictable Netherlands with an excellent attacker, Nimir Abdel Aziz.
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The first set was a surprise, although both teams fought evenly for more than half of the set. At 15:15, however, the Dutch unexpectedly switched gears. Roberto Piazza’s players, led by the above-mentioned Abdel Aziz, allowed their opponents to score only four points until the end of the set, winning 25:19.
Perhaps this was due to the serious injury of Italian center Roberto Russo, who badly sprained his leg in the middle of the first set and was carried off the pitch by his teammates.
However, the irritated Italians responded exactly as befits champions. The next two sets were absolute domination of the world and European champions, who played great serve and played very well in the “block-defense” system. The Dutch were helpless, and the Italians took the next two sets, winning by 17 and 16.
When several thousand fans gathered in the Bari hall expected Italy to quickly advance to the semi-finals, their rivals, led by Abdel Aziz, suddenly woke up. The Dutch attacker bombarded the Italians in attack and service, which allowed his team to gain as much as seven points (10:17). However, later it became tense for a while, because the Italians made up for a significant part of the losses, first to 17:19, and then they even came closer to one point (22:23), which forced Roberto Piazza to take a timeout. It worked, although the Italians had a peak at 24:24 up, but Yuri Romano hit a throw-in and thanks to the win by 23, the Netherlands led to the tie-break.
In the decisive game, the Italian coach called time-out when the score was 0-2, but perhaps it was necessary, because soon his players were able to change the score from 3-5 to 7-5, mainly thanks to Yuri Romano’s points. After a triple block attack by Alessandro Michieletto, Italia was leading 11:8 and the Dutch coach had to ask for a timeout. But despite sometimes extraordinary actions – defenses and blows – from both sides, the defending champions did not let it go. They won the tie-break 15:12 and, winning the entire match 3:2, advanced to the semi-finals.
Italy was led to victory by Alessandro Michieletto (22 points) and Yuri Romano (20 points), while the Dutch were not satisfied with the great performance of Nimir Abdel Aziz (30 points).
In the semi-final, the Italians’ opponents will be the Olympic champions, France. The second semi-final pair will be composed of the Polish and Slovenian teams. Both matches will be played on Thursday in Rome.
2023-09-12 21:47:00
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