Posts by Meatballs

    I think this is because the first round is at home. It would be difficult to leave Eda out. But I assume in the next two rounds, we will see some new names, I believe players like Eda, Zehra, Cansu and maybe Vargas might get some rest because they looked very tired at the end of the season. It might actually be wise to use Ebrar as opposite in one round and Vargas in the other, letting them rest.


    When it comes to players like Neriman, Meliha and Kubra, I agree Janko. It was probably too much pressure on Santarelli to include them and at least give them one final summer with the NT. Neriman still can be useful and Kubra too, but there are many alternatives for Meliha, especially Ilkin who received over 800 serves during the season, played always and received with Anthi/Logan-Bihter duo, which were nightmares in serve receive.

    Eda and Zehra should absolutely rest, not sure about Cansu-Vargas-Ebrar. I think they should be rested actively, being at bench but still being there. Cansu needs to adapt to this new system with 2 dominant wings and also get used to setting Vargas as opposite and high balls to Ebrar at left. I guess they can all rest at last week of VNL.

    The results are disappointing yet we should see the full side of the glass too. Basically the results are saying: "every second person in this country hates you and does not approve you". Not sure how influential these numbers will be in his future decisions but they are all aware that they cannot do anything they want otherwise half of the country is waiting to protest.


    To me it is funny to read that people expect too much from the main opposition part - CHP and blame them for all the failures. What people don't understand is, Turkey became like US where people vote between 2 options in the end and this is beneficial for center right/right wing parties where main opposition is social democrats. Looking at Turkish people's political choices, it can be said that roughly 60% of the country identify themselves as center-right/right wing, where the numbers are growing with the addition of new citizens, mainly refugees. On the other side, left-wing people are probably around 35% of the country, where the numbers increase with youngsters voting the first time. So in this equation, it is very difficult to expect a social democrat led opposition to get more than 50% of the votes, more importantly, it was an extremely difficult task to unite left wing people with kurdish and nationalists at the same time.


    What people should blame is lack of other strong center, center-right parties which can/should steal votes from Erdogan's government. So many of us forget a close history, late 90s, where Turkey had 4-5 center right parties in parliament, all getting around 10-15% of the votes each. Today, they are all under the same umbrella, the union of Erdogan which also explains why he involves any potential leader rising with center-right background (with a few failures such as Meral Aksener). His health condition looked terrible during the last 6 months and I am sure it will get worse, especially when the country is dealing with so many problems right now. To me it is very clear, if Erdogan quits, there is noone as strong as him to unite all those center-right voters, which means we might go back to having 3-4 parties sharing those votes and therefore seeing coalition governments. This is of course unless they make a drastic change in constitution which I assume is difficult due to 50/50 votes in the election (not enforcing legally, but creating a psychological barrier).

    Well, these youngsters will not develop at all if the league is useless as it is now and they have very small chances to play abroad. Also playing with NT 2 months will not help, especially if the coach is Lauri.


    I know it is all connected, there are no proper investments to volleyball since it is not as popular yet. So these girls really need to make a big step during this summer, hopefully winning Golden league and ending up with good results in EM. After that I am sure the investments will increase.

    Swedish libero will unfortunately be the biggest problem for them. Also middles now that Topic is not there.

    It is really sad with the illness of Topic but last summer she was playing because Jonna Wasserfaller was injured, otherwise I think she would be benched. Sure they will miss her as a good sub, but I think the plan is to play with Linda/Jonna as middles. I am more worried about setters and liberos as you wrote.

    I am quite surprised Sweden NT didnt try to play with Maja Jonsson, who was elected as the rookie of the season in Elitserien last season (Swedish first division). Jonsson, who is a roughly 200 cm tall MB and born 2003, represented Värnamo, one of the worst teams in the league, but still did fairly well. I think she was the best blocker or at least one of the best blockers in the whole league. She has the height which Sweden otherwise has traditionally lacked in the front court/at the net. Hopefully she gets a chance in the future as she seems talented.

    I know Maja since her childhood, she has always been very tall, like over 190 when she was 12-13. Problem was as expected, she was extremely slow, clumsy and had no coordination. But I heard from some friends following her this season that she actually improved her posture and a lot of physical issues, now being much faster. She will play in Göteborg Volley next season if I am not wrong, with Taylor Bruns, hope she will learn to read the game better, that can help a lot to her and also Swedish volleyball in future, considering she is still 19 years old.

    Lol I am so glad I was right about Asli. Defended her since her first seasons in GS and was criticised for favoring a short MB. Now we see that size does not matter as much and she is a very good MB.


    Congrats to FB! A well deserved title. If Vargas was with the team in first half of the season, they would finish the season first placed as well.

    dude. because players are not invicible. Tica carried this team undefeated to reach this final. what kind of logic do you have?

    OMG are you guys Boskovic's mom and dad? I just said I feel bad for Eczacibasi for once that they invested so much time and money on her and getting this performance when it matters. This was a reaction to those who kept saying "oh I feel sorry for Boskovic because....".


    If you guys are fine with Tica not winning any medals, I guess you are right that it is enough for her to carry this team to the final lol. But then don't complain when she gets neverending silver medals.

    Noone should feel sorry for Boskovic lol, its better to feel sorry for Eczacibasi, for investing so much money and time on her and getting this performance. It also does not feel like Voronkova is on the court, did not hear her name at all. Saliha and Yaprak tried really hard but Ferhat and his stars failed big times.

    We should give some credit to the receivers though. How many teams on earth can serve as effective as FB? I mean they have two amazing jump servers like Arina and Vargas, Ana C also has a good jump serve, Eda has always been dangerous with her jump floats. Now they added Cansu Cetin to their armour. All in all, they simply don't give a moment for breathing to the opponents.

    Well the problem is, other teams are not serving well enough to make Arina/Ana C duo. We saw how Arina had troubles against Vakifbank in semifinals just a couple of days ago and they werent serving that good either. And they lost that match 3-0. They also lost semifinals in CL...So if it is working perfect, why didnt it work back then?


    I understand it if you say Voronkova can take the defensive OH role or LYY can receive at least her corridor without troubles. But saying LYY can fix Eczacis problems when Simge is performing like this is an interesting perspective. I guess some people think volleyball is just all about sending the ball 10 meters up on the air and attacking it.