Russia NT 2021

    Koroleva and Fetisova are massively under-performing which is not a good sign.. I would expect the OHs and Opp to under-perform, but it is the MBs that are the biggest weakness of this Russian team :gone:

    I would like to see Fedorovtseva + Pipunyrova and Lazazreva as OPP next week.. Arina gives me some old-school Russian vibes.. she rarely (if ever) smiles.

    Quote from inc0gnito

    I would like to see Fedorovtseva + Pipunyrova and Lazazreva as OPP next week.. Arina gives me some old-school Russian vibes.. she rarely (if ever) smiles.

    Sadly, Lazareva will join the team in the fourth week. I think Smirnova could perform nicely. IMO, Arina, Voronkova, and Smirnova must play next week... Pipunyrova's reception is like Kapustina's (bad), but I think she can be better attacking.

    Quote from Husky123

    Sadly, Lazareva will join the team in the fourth week. I think Smirnova could perform nicely. IMO, Arina, Voronkova, and Smirnova must play next week... Pipunyrova's reception is like Kapustina's (bad), but I think she can be better attacking.

    I like Smirnova, she seems pretty fearless. I think Fetisva and Koroleva should also play some games, as they need all the playing time they can get before Olympics.

    I just like to share a little stats here:


    For the lost game to Dutch, Fedorovtseva had a stunning 56% hitting success rate (14 out of 25), despite she had to deal with some bad set balls, plus 3/3 blocks and one ace. I don't know who else on this Russian team has such an outstanding performance.

    I think the B team did better than expected agains NED but over all no surprises.


    Setters: pretty solid

    OPP: Goncharova is showing a good form. Smirnova did better than I expected from her club performance. Still don't think that she is an option for the OG. Gorbunova hardly played. I think she is a promising player (18 y.o.) and it was a good move to bring her along.

    MB: Very disappointing. Never made sense to bring Malygina and she did not show otherwise. Almost the same for Brovkina. She is tall and young but that should not be enough to include her. She was not even the best MB in her club!

    OH: The players played as expected. Kapustina's attack was not as good in the club season but her serve got stronger. I would like to see Smirnova playing OH (used to receive when she played in Moscow).

    Libera: Pilipenko was not used much in reception at her club (Kurnosova did receive and was one of the best receiver in the league) and as expected she had her problems... Zaytseva showed about the same level as she did all season which is pretty solid.

    It's my personal opinion. Unfortunately, I think the biggest problem comes from Russian clubs. They buy the players today but they give nothing to the players in turn. That's why Russian players always make simple mistakes and sometimes even childish mistakes when they play for the NT. Personally, I find the pyramid system useful for them. Let me talk a little bit about this system. The purpose of this system is to prepare the players for the nt in their clubs. They teach everything, how to receive, serve, set, defence, and minimalize unforced errors etc. Most importantly, they always keep players in a good shape. Unfortunately, when Russian players come to the nt from their clubs, they always seem out of shape. Ofc, players need to learn a lot of things in their clubs with the help of this system and the best ones should be taken to the nt because there is not much time in the nt to improve/or learn everything from scratch. Fe, olimpics will start in 2 months and then ECH. yes I know, they are inexperienced and I know, some of them play for the nt for the first time. as Gracheva said they will play in the Ech, even some of them will be selected to the OGs and no one will pay attention to such things there. Ofc, you can win and lose, this is not even problem, VNL is the best place to see weak lines and improve it but there are some mistakes that are unacceptable imo or let's say alarming. I know it's first week, let's hope they will improve day by day.

    I totally agree with Ksyusha. The physical and technical development of a player happen mostly in the clubs where they spend most of the year. The focus of the NT should be on tactics and creating automatisms between the players on court. I guess many clubs have not the financial ressources to hire enough and good staff to focus on player development (main exceptions are Kazan and Uralochka). What really annoys is that a big club like Dynamo seems to be lacking in the development of young players. Zarechie and Lipetsk seem to focus and young players but I think they do not have the ressources.

    I don't know how much and in what way the Volleyball Federation of Russia is helping the clubs but there are several things they could do. They could send coaches to the clubs to help out or organize trainings for NT prospects (since the country is huge they would need several locations). They could pay clubs a specified amount of money for each NT prospect. They should do workshops and courses for club coaches to improve their skills etc.

    It seems to me that Busato has no clue what he is doing other than sticking to the old system -- old line-up, everything to Goncharova -- let me try pretend to be Russian women volleyball coach for tomorrow's game against Italy.


    Setter: Lazareva

    OPP: Smirnova

    OH: Fredorovtseva, Voronkova

    MB: Korolova, Fetisova (never use Malygina and Brovkina, they will only hurt the team rather than help the team)

    L: Zaytseva


    Italian is a young team but fast, Old system of Russian women volleyball is too slow to deal with a fast team, later on to deal with Japanese is even more so.

    Russian only need to force serve and be calm at clutch cause italy is so bad at receive and can close a game

    Federotseva really deserves more opportunities and to be a Starter, I don't know what happened to Voronkova, she was extra blocked today... Pilipenko isn't playing well ..... I'm sure when Malova is back russian defense is going to improve a lot. Kosheleva today struggled a little bit in reception than in the past games.Really hope they do a descent game against brazil tomorrow.

    Quote from binsoy

    Fedorovtseva’s no-look line shot is impressive. Interesting how she’ll play vs. Brazil. She’ll have to hit more deep cross or Brazil’s block will eat her up.

    She exudes "I got this" energy everytime she spikes. I really love it.

    Quote from binsoy

    Fedorovtseva’s no-look line shot is impressive

    yes, it is

    I expected the loss against Brazil today but I didn't expect Russia would lose that bad. Okay, Busato decided to start the game with the inexperienced players and sure, they made mistakes but I think it was a questionable decision to sub them out so early in that first set. He didn't gave them a chance to grow into the game. That could possibly ruin their confidence. I was hoping for a win in the third set, but sadly, it didn't happen and Brazil crushed Russia convincingly in straight sets.

    It's painful watching Russia play this way and it's so easy to count them out after this loss, but then again, this is just one game. A lot of things can still change in the next games and hopefully, like Karch used to say, "good things will happen."

    Quote from bibetron

    I expected the loss against Brazil today but I didn't expect Russia would lose that bad. Okay, Busato decided to start the game with the inexperienced players and sure, they made mistakes but I think it was a questionable decision to sub them out so early in that first set. He didn't gave them a chance to grow into the game. That could possibly ruin their confidence. I was hoping for a win in the third set, but sadly, it didn't happen and Brazil crushed Russia convincingly in straight sets.

    It's painful watching Russia play this way and it's so easy to count them out after this loss, but then again, this is just one game. A lot of things can still change in the next games and hopefully, like Karch used to say, "good things will happen."

    Use a new line up for the game against Brazil did make sense but the problem is I do not think this new line up has ever been trained together as a team. No one knows what to do, they were totally only a group of players but not a team at all. By protecting the main players from the humiliation of defeat while hang this young group out dry is really bad coaching. Now I seriously doubt the ability of this coach.

    Let us hope tomorrow will be a better day