Italy - Superlega 2021-2022

    What a match of Piacenza vs. Trentino!

    Piacenza was down at 0:2, but made a huge comeback win at 3:2, with a crazy score 24:22 in set #5. =O


    Lagumdzija was still not in goog shape after his recovery from Covid19. Stern saved Piacenza's ass again.


    Trentino will have two crucial matches next week,

    CL semi in the middle of next week, and superlega playoff 1/4 on next weekend.

    Keita is taking Italian citizenship and transferring to Verona. It's good for himself, club, and NT.


    Rumors say Kamil will be Italian as well.


    It will be a tough competition cause only one of them can be in tournament roster for NT. Kamil is safer option, he will not lead to team but Micheiletto-Lavia can take this role. Keita is still raw talent and more power opp. Curious how Stoychev will help him to improve.


    Neutralization fight for Italian MNT will be more interesting than Turkey WNT where there is a clear choice, Vargas.


    Mozic-Keita duo might be the new Kaziyski-Osmany duo under Stoychev?

    Too much talks about naturalization, citizenships.. why not just change limit of foreigners then?

    It's just a veeeery far-reaching rumor as for now, what would be basis for Keita to obtain Italian citizenship?


    The same with Rychlicki, I heard from knowledgeable person that Rychlicki isn't too keen to represent other NT, so we'll see if that happens even if he receives Italian citizenship. And if he does and he's in fact interested in playing for Italy, he won't be eligible to play until 2025 if FIVB rules don't change. Not to mention that Stefani from Taranto this season was good enough to expect from him to reach Rychlicki's level in a near future, and there's another giant, Tommaso Barotto from Italian Youth team, and he's a legit talent, so we'll see if Italy in fact needs Rychlicki in 3 years from now.


    Keita-Mozic duo would be huge tho.

    Quote from sloth

    Too much talks about naturalization, citizenships.. why not just change limit of foreigners then?

    I think among Italian fans there's a constant criticism that the limits are too liberal in fact (at least in regard of male league), because there's gazillion average foreigners sitting on benches of Italian clubs with Italy NT being in crisis till Michieletto happened. On the other hand, top teams want to have as much foreign players as it is possible (young foreigners are cheap, Italy has no world-class MB, so to have Sole as a local player, for example, is a treasure), so they do whatever they can.


    It's not that bad as for now, but I wrote in other thread that there are rumors that license/citizenship rule will be changed (so foreign player with Italian citizenship will be counted as a local even though he has non-Italian license and federation) - and this will be really messy with many foreigners having Italian citizenship as well, but there's no confirmation of that, it's just Pasini-thing as for now.


    I don't think there's cause-effect relationship between level of a league/limit of foreigners - level of NT, but I can understand why countries want to have such limits.

    Quote from Realista

    I think among Italian fans there's a constant criticism that the limits are too liberal in fact (at least in regard of male league), because there's gazillion average foreigners sitting on benches of Italian clubs with Italy NT being in crisis till Michieletto happened. On the other hand, top teams want to have as much foreign players as it is possible (young foreigners are cheap, Italy has no world-class MB, so to have Sole as a local player, for example, is a treasure), so they do whatever they can.


    It's not that bad as for now, but I wrote in other thread that there are rumors that license/citizenship rule will be changed (so foreign player with Italian citizenship will be counted as a local even though he has non-Italian license and federation) - and this will be really messy with many foreigners having Italian citizenship as well, but there's no confirmation of that, it's just Pasini-thing as for now.


    I don't think there's cause-effect relationship between level of a league/limit of foreigners - level of NT, but I can understand why countries want to have such limits.

    I mean it wouldn't be the first time for Pasini to complitely misunerstand issues about citizenship/federetion of origin etc, so I wouldn't put too much faith in it until there's other outlets reporting it

    Link?

    It is quite remarkable how quickly Perugia has lost its shape, Leon is injured, in general Perugia is just out of form in every possible measure, today they had 25% positive reception, lol, and looked awful in basically every department. It's escalated really quickly considering they were 33-3 this season before this semi against Trentino: once they lost in Supercup (irrelevant), once without Giannelli and with Plotnitskiy in place of Anderson (understandable, still 2-3 against Trentino) and once 2-3 against Modena in the best game of the season in Italy so far. And now they look like typical Perugia's mess. I'm really looking forward to see if they can rebuild and play some decent volleyball, not even mentioning defeating Modena at this point, but we'll see. The other thing is theoretically it's only 0-1, you can do everything from there, but the vibe they gave (some weird provos, the body language etc) doesn't look promising at all.


    The fight for CL spots is getting tricky as well, Perugia has guaranteed spot no matter what, if Modena advances then they'll play in CL as well, so the last spot would be decided between Trentino and Civitanova in this scenario.