FIVB Women's U18 World Championship - Argentina

  • Turkish OPP is a good player but a badly behaved girl. She got a red card (deservedly!) for a totally stupid "celebration" (see here at 2:02:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAraVzy8Yn8 ), and towards the end of the set she kicked the ball in the direction of Italian players after not being able to defend. Obviously the referee didn't see that, otherwise he should have sent her off the court because it was in the same set as the red card and IMO worth another punishment :down:


    I really don't like it when players at that age show such behavior. It's good to play with emotions, but respect towards the opponent must never be lost!

    Unfortunately she is well known with such behaviour in her generation. I hope she will work with people who wont tolerate it and it wont cost to her volleyball life. The match was simply Pietrini versus Karakurt and Pietrini showed her quality, she was outstanding in attacking!


    The Turkish coach was a mess, didnt do anything to change the game, was late with time-outs and most important of all, he was being super mean at Ebrar Karakurt in one of his timeouts. I don't like it when a coach at that age group directs his anger to a specific player instead of talking to the entire group. Turkish setter was awful in my opinion which made a big big difference. Good that we will get some good offensive OHs and a potential Goncharova from this generation. I wonder how they will develop! :box:

  • I really liked one of Italian MBs a lot but can't remember her name anymore


    I guess you meant Lubian, number 5 ;)
    She was in Club Italia in A1 last year and, despite not being titular, she played a nice amount of time. This year she will be titular for sure, but CI is in A2. Most of the team will play there, actually.



    I can also see where the Turkish coach comes from


    I can see that too, in fact I wrote 'may be it's true' (for me it is definitely true for the end of the match, but I'm not sure it's true for the rest of the match).


    Still, imho – for education and fair play – or you (general you) speak only about your team (for example 'I'm sorry because we did many silly mistakes/we didn't express our best game/if we had done less mistakes we could have brought the match to the tie break), or – if you want to make statement about your opponents like 'they didn't win because they're better than us' (which may be true as well!) – you have to be polite and say 'but today the played better than us, doing less mistakes in crucial moments' (for example).
    Or, and that it's the optimum for me, you speak about your team and close the statement with the compliments toward your opponents ;)
    I mean, I think that in general it's a nice habit to congratulate the opponents for the victory, especially in important matches. That's my humble opinion, obviously, others may not share it ^^


    Ps It's interesting what you pointed out about the difference between mistakes and error, we generally use the same word in Italy ('errore', even if we have to word 'sbaglio' too) so I hadn't catch the slight difference, for me they're kinda synonyms.
    I'm glad you wrote that so I'll pay attention to it next time!




    and towards the end of the set she kicked the ball in the direction of Italian players after not being able to defend.


    I missed that.
    BTW, I was ok with her a bit over-the-line behavior (not a fan, but I had nothing to complain*) until the gesture that earned her the red card. I also notice that the crowd was quite fond of her, I read the because she often involves the public in her exultation (and because she's very good, obviously) they practically started cheering for her during the WCh.
    *and I promise you that I have a very 'delicate' taste for exultations: for example, I'm not in love with Italian exultations for blocks and aces, they seems a bit humiliatiing toward the opponents to me xD The same apply for the team where the players that kinda run in circle when they score (while they're both quite innocent way to exult, actually!).
    I do like the fact that the Italian players on court celebrate the aces with the bench, though. That's very nice.



    he was being super mean at Ebrar Karakurt in one of his timeouts. I don't like it when a coach at that age group directs his anger to a specific player instead of talking to the entire group.


    I notice that too, even if I wasn't able to understand the words so I didn't want to badly judge the coach based on nothing.
    Once also Mencarelli was a bit harsh with Populini and that surprised me, but after all he did that in a good way that helped her find a bit more courage on court.
    I guess he knows her good enough to know what she needs and doesn't needs to hear during a time out...

  • Honestly I thought that one was pretty funny :rolll: and yea somehow she seems to have managed to win the crowd over and it's not a Turkish crowd, however yes she is generally very disrespectful for her age. On the other hand I agree the coach was being way too harsh too her at times which may affect her mood. But I can't wait to see how Ebrar Karakurt will develop, she's playing really well and a good Opp is just what we need for Olympics 2020.

  • Turkish OPP is a good player but a badly behaved girl. She got a red card (deservedly!) for a totally stupid "celebration" (see here at 2:02:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAraVzy8Yn8 ), and towards the end of the set she kicked the ball in the direction of Italian players after not being able to defend. Obviously the referee didn't see that, otherwise he should have sent her off the court because it was in the same set as the red card and IMO worth another punishment :down:


    I really don't like it when players at that age show such behavior. It's good to play with emotions, but respect towards the opponent must never be lost!

    What a disgusting behavior :hit: I'm glad the Italians did nothing back.

  • What a disgusting behavior :hit: I'm glad the Italians did nothing back.


    Funny to see you think it's disgusting when a kid does things like this. You sure seemed hella amused every time Goncharova 'stared' at teenage players. Which is similar form of degrading opponents.


    I found the second thing Matthias showed much worse! She could have hit someone, Italian or Turkish! Someone needs to help her controll her emotions. She is very young and immature now but hopefully she'll grow out of this.

  • Oh yes, now I noticed.
    Despite being a dangerous thing to do (I would be most worried for the ankle that for the head, anyway :P) in a certain way I'm more ok with a potentially dangerous but instinctive bad gesture made out of frustration, than with a harmfulness bad gesture done on purpose to provocate the opponents.
    Well, obviously I'm not ok with neither, but I can easily forgive the ball kick, while the provocation under the net was quite nasty.


    Changing subject (but not player :P), I must admit that in Italy who followed the team trough the whole tournament was quite curious/eager to witness the inside-the-match challenge Pietrini vs Karakurt, and we feel like Pietrini won it in many ways :heart:

  • No, I also feel disgusted when Goncharova does that, so it's not only about the Turk. The grossest one was the visual conflict between Rahimova and Aydemir 2 years ago I guess, that was bloody minging indeed.

  • Ah forgot to write before but I didnt like the Turkish middles from this generation. Poorly executed balls in attacking, it makes life much harder for wing spikers and the setters. I also wonder why Turkish coach decided to play with no middles running slides since this looked way more effective, especially for Italian side, besides that Ebrar was used in pipe attack, not from zone 1 anyway. So in my opinion setters were the worst, followed by middles for Turkey, while wing spikers are probably the reason why this team reached to final 4 in this tournament.

  • Congrats to Russia for the bronze!
    I didn't watch the match since I was following with the ECh, so I can't add more. Actually I watched the beginning of the third, but knowing the result I guess it was very different than the rest of the match, since Turkey was crushing Russia with a 5-0 start...

  • Dominicana couldn't possibly play worse than that first set.


    Anyway, regardless of the outcome of this specific match, there are some very strong signals for a bright future. I like this NT even more than the previous one with Egonu.

  • I like the D.Republic`s libero, she reminds me of Castilo.


    I`m surprised there`s more fans cheering for Italy, once the Dominicans are from the same continent and speaks the same language.

  • I checked some data (aka Wikipedia xD) before answering (and I wrote during time outs xD): there are more than 600.000 Italians in Argentina. In Argentina there are 20-25 mln people that have Italians origins, at that's the biggest ethnic group in Argentina; more than 50% of Arg claim to have italian ancestors/relatives.
    The italo-arg community is the second biggest italian community abroad after the Brazilian.