8th august 2008
Beijing (CHN)

The opening Volleyball match of the XXIX Olympic Games between Italy and Russia is fatefully bounded to the saddest story of Taismary Aguero.
A few days ago, when she was traveling to Beijing with the rest of the Italian team, Aguero was informed of the critical health conditions of her mother. She tried immediately to fly to Cuba to visit her mother but, due to her “escape" from Cuba in 2001, she hasn’t the permission to reenter Cuba.
She waited uselessly two days in Germany to obtain the visa, then she decided to fly back to Beijing. As soon as she landed in China, she received the authorization to enter her native country from the Cuban diplomats (based in Bonn) but it was too late, because her mother passed away at 8.30 AM of this morning (9th August, Beijing time).

The Italian players and staff were unaware of the Aguero’s mother death during the match and only at the end, they received the terrible news.
Now there are all together in the Olympic Village trying to help their team-mate and waiting for the next match.

Isn’t easy go back to Volleyball after a such a terrible event, so I prefer to outline briefly the themes that came out from the match.

Italy-Russia was the most unpredictable game of the first day. Given that the first match of every tournament is always tricky, the first game of the Olympic Games is particularly thorny.

Both the teams were a little unconfident tough for different reasons.
The Italian team had to face the “unavailability” of Aguero and the unexpected absence of Antonella Del Core who, only a few days before the beginning of the Beijing Games, had to give up the Olympics for a physical problem.

Barbolini, the Italian coach, started with Nadia Centoni, who joined the rest of the team at the last moment replacing Del Core, as opposite. Once more time, the Italian key to victory was the team-working. They were patient and played consistently in all the fundamentals, making only few errors.

On the other side before the match, the coach of the Russian team (the Italian Giovanni Caprara), was very concerned about his setters’ lack of accuracy and the emotional approach of the players. Both the worries were factual. The Russians wasted many opportunities and played spiritless.
After the defeat Caprara was very angry due to the result, the wrong approach and - mostly - for the statement given by Gamova (RUS player): “Playing at ten o’clock in the morning is too early, that’s why we played poorly!”

Caprara replied straightly: “both the teams played at the same time: I cannot accept this silly alibi. The truth is that the Russian players don’t like to work hard. I’m trying to change this wrong mentality but I’m not succeeding because I’m alone. None in Russia is truly supporting me in this process.”

This was the strong statement and the Russian journalists attending the press conference disagreed evidently. I think that those reporters are the evidence of how difficult is to work in Russia for the foreigner coaches. Since more or less ten years, the Russian Volleyball started to work with coaches coming from other countries. But the Russians are still convinced that they can do it better because they historically are the home of Volleyball. Therefore they don’t support thoroughly that choice and they go back at their typical behaviors as soon as they face though matches.

In the next days I’ll ask them (the reporters and Caprara) if I’m wrong.


Bye bye and a big hug to Taismary Aguero

To know more about the situation of Taimary Aguero, WATCH HER VIDEO INTERVIEW recorded during the last World Grand Prix Final Round in Yokohama Japan.

andrea zorzi

After the great experience of the 2007 (SEE HERE) Andrea Zorzi, one of the world’s most famous Volleyball players, will keeps cooperating with the FIVB as a freelance journalist and technical commentator, covering the 2008 FIVB top events as a special endorser and web content creator.

FOLLOW ME was at:

the World Grand Prix 9-13 July in Yokohama (JPN)

and

the World League 23-27 July Rio de Janeiro (BRA)



In a few days we will be at the Olympic Games  in Beijing


- A different kind of approach to the games info, more multimedia oriented: one video interview and one commentary by Zorzi after each competition day, uploaded few minutes after the last match.
- A different perspective of the interviews, helped both by Zorzi’s personality and his plain approach to the players.
- A more technical broadening, which hopefully will help the spectators to better understand the key to each match (strategy, tactics, mental approach).

See you soon

andrea zorzi