Julio Velasco embraces the blue again. After the rumors and denials from the person concerned, the official announcement arrived yesterday afternoon: the Argentine coach, leader of the Generation of Italian men’s volleyball phenomena of the 90s, will be the new technical commissioner of the women’s national team from 1 January of volleyball.
The presentation press conference is scheduled for November 21st, with Velasco who will therefore leave the Busto Arsizio bench from 2024, given that the Federvolley does not allow its coaches to have double roles.
For the coach from La Plata it is a return to the past, to that blue which made him a legend of world volleyball at the helm of the men’s national team, before his stint on the bench of the women’s team in the 97/’98 season. Still in the women’s field, he was the architect of Club Italia: an intuition that allowed many of the highly decorated Italian champions of the latest generations to be forged. Among these there is also Paola Egonu, who took flight from Club Italia and who with the arrival of Velasco sees the doors of the national team opened wide again after a year full of poisons, in which between the post-World Cup racist controversy and the breakdown of the relationship with the former coach Mazzanti at the European Championships, his career in blue reached historic lows.
The new coach had already sent messages to our champion, on the day of his presentation as Busto Arsizio’s new coach: «The advice I can give you is that it doesn’t matter what others say, what you think of yourself is important. You have to leave everything else alone and work better than you ever have in your life.”
From January their paths will cross in the national team. With the Olympics in the background: the triumph that has always eluded Velasco at the helm of men’s Italvolley, the goal that would project Egonu into a different dimension, erasing poison and controversy in one fell swoop, in what could be the great (and perhaps last) opportunity to relaunch his story in the blue shirt.
