2014 FIVB World Championship - Italy - 9/23

    Thank you so much for this :)

    Quote from pappi

    there is no undefeated team in this tournament so far, after brasil lost the semi.


    besides, i just found one interesting match records between these four(4) teams:
    USA/China, now facing the title match, both were defeated twice by Italy/Brasil respectively in the second/third stage, but both won back in the kick-off match against Brasil and Italy, by the same score of 3-0 and 3-1 in the second stage when they were defeated for the first time.


    Remark: DO NOT meet your rivals for the 2nd time, because they will beat you as what you did.

    That's true!!
    2004 Olympics: China vs Cuba 2-3 then 3-2
    2012 Olympics: USA vs Brazil 3-1 then 1-3
    2007 Europeans: Poland vs Serbia 3-0 then 0-3


    And even if not with the same result Russia won twice Brazil in a World Championship after being defeated by Brazil in the first round (in 1998 in semifinal and in 2006 in final).


    :lol:

    The semifinalists of montreux tournament will play final match of WCH while the champion germany is nowhere,it shows perfectly how your stuff works :whistle: anyway i loved the score of the last matches.As i said before brazil is not the best team for me no matter what their name says and we saw their capacity against good serves as yesterday and against turkey in group matches.Italy should be glad cause they r playing for a medal thanks to they r home.Otherwise this team cant be in top 6 in this tournament.But i wish them good luck on today match against brazil.They at least deserve bronze medal more than brazil :)


    And i have to say that i loved how china played against italy.For years they have been playing as a fake european team style but it was completly an asian team on the court with great defences and blocks so italy couldnt handle with it.Really good job china hope u will get golden medal :flower:

    Yeah keep dreaming that brazil is the best :whistle: a team which cant win WCH at least for 12 years,what a perfect team :rolll:


    You should be glad that gamova was not in her best otherwise russia would slap them as before they did :wavy:


    Btw brazil and italy have so many old players like what poland did and we see how poland is now.Brazil has good young players but what about italy,after they lose lo bianco,del core,costagrande,piccinini they would have a big blow.Especially ECH will be so hard for them.

    nyahahahha great observations base on a few games and will say their theory is correct because of a single event, wait brazil is not the perfect team? who is the perfect team then? usa who has been the team of the year 2 times (2011-2012) in 10 years? russia who is the team of the year in 2006? or maybe italy who is the team of the year in 2007? caused you know if a team like brazil is not a perfect team then that make other teams quite pathetic :lol:

    imo there is not so much to say about italy's defeat... china was younger, faster, better at defence. It's difficult to win a tournament when you have to play 12 games in 3 weeks with 33-34 years' players...they simply can't have the same level of performance...and when you face team like china, with their amazing defence, it's very difficult get the win...
    we tried, we almost took the match again ( if you go to tie break i don't know if china would have won) , but kudos to china.

    Finally got round to watching the semis...simply wow to USA, they played incredibly well and Brazil was surprisingly weak, some of their players clearly were nervous which affected their performance. I read that Ze Roberto complained about the referees after the match but I don't agree. There were some questionable decisions and mainly non-decisions on technique but IMO they were evenly distributed so that neither team had a disadvantage from it. And it's not like the match was tight enough overall for the referees to have had a chance to have an impact on the result.


    As for Italy, Bonitta made a crucial mistake in 4th set. He entered Bosetti on serve for Chirichella and that was his 6th substitution, so at 28:28 Bosetti rotated to the net and he could not bring Chirichella back and Italy was without MB for the last two points. The match might have ended the same way with an MB on the court but I think Bonitta should not have done that.

    ITALY lost the first set.

    So is this supposed to be farewell match for those italian queens? A gold must have been so perfect for them but a Bronze at home aint so bad anyway. Andiamo ragazze!


    Ze roberto is such an unpleasant loser, always complains amd complains. I hoped Gamova would make his mouth shut but apparently both of them failed this time. Sheilla became very weak recently, don't get why #11 (dont remember her name) doesnt play starter...

    Quote from ossubtus

    #11, tandara, i don't know how she plays in the BRA league, can she maintain that level throughout a whole match? as a bench player, she's a great sub.

    She's constantly the best scorer of Brazilian league, so yeah. She's hands down the team's next starter OPP. I'm just not sure if that's gonna happen before the 2016 Olympics.