this has been one of the only few matches that i've seen of the EC because i'm busy with work and i only see the results of the matches through the statistics. it puzzled me why a team like italy who is so good with defense would have games where they give less than 20% of their balls to their excellent middle hitters. and when i watched the match, it's because italy gets a lot of their points not in sideout, but on the counter attacks. and since reception wouldn't be too good in digging compared to receiving, piccinini and aguero would naturally get a really high number of sets.
i think italy would win the match tomorrow if the netherlands overloads their defense on flier. italy knows how to neutralize european style of volleyball where teams rely too much on their opposite. the key to the match today is if the netherlands does the same thing they did with the poles where the middle hitter was always involved. and for visser to stop dinking the ball too often.if teams continue to play the way they have, italy will surely get 2 in a row.
germany is a better team than poland. but i want poland to win just because they are the underdog here and only a few really expect them to win. poland needs to find a more prolific scorer in the outside hitter position other than jagielo. when the stars skowronska etc. are back, i think that hole in their rotation will be addressed. kaczor hits really well from the left wing. and she's more promising in defense compared to podolec. plus podolec hasn't fully recovered yet. when skowronska is back, i think kaczor should try playing as a receiver instead of opposite.
in their respective matches, two players were playing way below the level they were capable of: kozuch for germany and zenik for poland. kozuch wasn't attacking as well as she could, i was wondering why weiss insisted to set to her instead of setting to their other wing hitters. kozuch was almost as horrible in attack as brinker, but everyone expects brinker to play that way anyways. zenik had a lot of receiving errors, too many for a libero. plus there were a lot of diggable balls that she was not able to dig.
germany is a young team and the team may crumble under pressure and the the polish support might really influence the game. but germany has been playing with a lot of maturity and steadiness and it's very likely that they will win.
