Posts by andrea

  • Chinese men's NT 2025

    I watched the Challenge Cup last year, and China's team was way more complete and performed better than VNL this year. What happened to their lefty opp, Wang JY? It looks like he's seriously injured that he has to miss the entire NT season.

  • VNL 2025 Men’s

    It is so challenging for a small country like Slovenia to replace the Urnaut and Cebuij duo. Their offensive and defensive consistency point after point, game after game is hardly paralleled. Mozic attacks slightly better, but lacks reception. Coach reasonably pairs him with Z. Stern to stabilize reception as much as possible. But asking normally a second libero on court to play all facets of the game is too demanding for him. Unfortunately, that's already the best solution right now.


    OTOH, Planinsic's setting has visibly improved compared with the last two years. Connection with his teammates is much better.

  • VNL 2025 Men’s

    I think Ukraine missed out on the finals in the final moment for a couple of reasons:


    1. As VNL debutantes, many players could not cope with the pressure well. For those who watched their game vs Canada, you could see how they under-performed and their tense facial expression. Players simply lost their concentration completely in the last few points of the match.


    2. Kovalov who's been so reliable in the first two weeks suddenly lost his form in the final week, causing imbalance in their attacking trio. With a mediocre depth of the squad, the two reserve OHs could not step up to fill up that gap. I've read that a few players got sick during the rest week ahead of Week 3, but there's very little news about the Ukrainian team.


    Yanchuk has likely caught the interest from many European clubs after this VNL debut. He's a very well-rounded OH with sought-after consistency.

  • VNL 2024 Men’s

    Quote from Sassy

    Poland playing their starters vs Cuba today and not even having Janusz/Kurek with the squad yesterday vs Serbia is quite brutal... But! If Cuba had just won the direct confrontation earlier this week when they were 2-0 up in sets, this fact wouldn't have mattered anyway so congrats to Serbia on this deserving OG spot :flower:

    Yesterday, when Grbic kept rotating the players on court, I had the impression that he might want to give his home country's team a hand. It's just that the current Serbian team is too weak to receive this gift. Today, as expected, from start to finish he fielded an almost full squad against Cuba.


    Anyway, Cuba was once in a very advantageous spot after an amazing week 1. It's still the same squad but it looks like a different team now. Today, they simply could not stage a fight. No wonder they crumbled in the most important matches for the last two editions of OG (vs Canada in 2021, and vs Serbia this week).

  • Italy - Superlega 2023/24

    D'amico, Verona's L, passed really well in the game vs Perugia. He already showed an impressive performance last season as Lube's second libero. I think he deserves at least a trial in the coming NT season.

  • Italy - Superlega 2023/24

    Has Ben Tara changed his sports nationality to Polish? IIRC, he hasn't represented Tunisia again after Tokyo Olympics. He is really solid and mature, with well-rounded offense and superb blocking skills.

  • Olympic Qualification Tournaments - Paris 2024

    Retrospectively speaking, while Belgium has been (understandably) choking the whole match, originally they still could have taken down Bulgaria in the final moment when they leveled 13:13. What’s unexpected is that it’s Penchev burying their hope with a challenging OOS spike and then a block point. That’s not his normal standard :-)

  • Eurovolley 2023 (men)

    Since last year, Giani has been constantly using Jouffroy as a serving specialist, who either faulted or created no troubles to opponents' reception. What's the point of this robotic substitution??