Posts by Steven12453

Soli reminded me Gaspari in Milano. This defeat has his signature. He was a total mess and changed the players all the time. The team should have Keita, Mozic and Darlan as starters. That's the best combination. Unfortunately Mozic has been destroyed. It's not his health issues. Unfortunately it's a difficult and tricky situation. The setter is playing great and has a good connection with everyone, but at the same time he totally destroys the captain of his team with really low and uncomfortable sets that ARE IMPOSSIBLE to be killed. It's been a whole season. They should understand that he had to set him the ball much higher than this.

I do not expect Perugia to have issues. They will win at four. That's my prediction. Podrascanin's impact has change everything in my opinion. Having an extra option in attack changed everything for Lube and made the team less predictable.

Quote from Realista

Kwolek rejected a call-up few years ago due to wedding (?), an he's black-listed since. He would've been at best 5th OH (Semeniuk, Fornal, Leon are better, and Śliwka has a guaranteed spot on the roster due to him being a leader for Grbic), so it's not like there's any pressure on Grbic to actually change his mind.

Fornal is always mediocre at best in the NT, Semeniouk is constantly flopping in key matches and Sliwka... Do I have to remind to everyone what happened the previous season? Semeniouk flopped both in semifinal and in the bronze medal match and he was benched, not for the healthy Szalpuk, but for Fornal that could not even JUMP. They need an alternative solution in the OH position.

Grbic must have big problem with Kwolek. I am not a big fan of him, but the most of the other OH's that has been called are clearly worst players.

WTF Vakif???

Quote from QuickOutside

Orro apparently had a knee injury …

Oh really? I thought that it was just Abbodanza's decision.

Arelya is starting

Quote from Realista

This is how the (European) female volleyball looks like in general in the last decade or so, Italy NT doesn't even care about using sliders anymore, and they won every game in the last 2 seasons but one. Even this famous 'Conegliano system' is just having an elite setter playing really fast (and all-round great team), because in terms of variance their volleyball is objectively more one dimensional than e.g. Bergamo or Perugia back in the day. Basically if you exclude slide attack (and it's not like this is volume-wise a crucial part of Conegliano offense) - this is just a prime Zaksa/France/Piacenza-like volleyball, nothing more than that.

Also, Conegliano has like the best setter in the world, the best libero, top3 OH pairings at least, and top5 opposite - so if you want to go semantics, it's having superior players what creates this 'system', and not the system itself giving a comparative advantage, because it's not like you can tell Bosio 'do you know this Wolosz girl? tomorrow you'll play like her, please'. In this sense, indeed it's interesting what Conegliano plans to do after Wołosz/De Gennaro era, because besides Van Aalen and Fersino, I can't think of a duo perhaps ready to at least to some extent fill in their shoes.

In the past, male volleyball had athleticism, and female volleyball had variance and technique - now female volleyball is paradoxically more dependent on athleticism considering that best female players impact-wise are much better than the male counterparts, and score 30+ points on weekly basis. Markova's splits comparatively are like anything we see in the male volleyball in terms of 'above average' %s she produces.

And Milano is in the middle of all of this, but without an elite setter, and elite OH duo. What can you do other than create a worse Italy NT? The same with Poland NT: yeah, we had Wołosz, but our OH depth was like a level of back-ups at the top team - and people were like 'where is Wołosz magic?'.

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I've seen Bosio play before goes to Milano. In Novara she was much more creative, she was faster and used a lot the pipe attack both with the OH's and with Tolok as well. Also just as Bosio, Orro was even worst the previous season, even more slow and predictable. In Fener she looks like a completely different player. She plays fast with Vargas ( just as she should with Paola), she uses the pipe and she plays a lot of combo plays. I said it again. If she could play like this in MIlano they could definetely win something and as we can clearly see now she CAN DO IT... The matter is what she's been told to do...

When it comes to Italy, it's a different matter. Much lower level, much worst oppenents and really they were never truly different at this matter. Only Egonu was used in combo plays and she was just better in this system. The others??? No. They always played in the simplest way possible in the attack.

For Milano, technically speaking their worst problem is the blocking in zone 4. Piva and Lanier are nothing for Haak... She just easily goes ever the top of them and even Egonu could've done even in this bad physical shape.

Generally I do not like Lavarani's system at all. It's like a system for men's volleyball and it is like this in every team that he coached. It's just boring and predictable. In this system, Milano's players have been improved a lot during the season, but there are much better and more creative ways to play volleyball. At the first match their problem were definetely a mental one. Egonu's injury affected them a lot. They could win the forth set without her but....

I hate that I write this. but yesterday Egonu was definetely the main and the biggest problem of the team. At the first two sets she made everything wrong and she affected everyone's psychology. When she showed everybody else stopped playing and Bosio made a horrible distribution at the last set... Both Milano's victories had a common thing.... A monster performance by Paola and I don't thing that's going to happen at the next match, simply, because she didn’t seem to be in good shape physically, and both her jump and her strength looked far below her usual level.

What was this mess? I just so pissed of with Milano.

Quote from mintonette

Freaking VBTV 💀

You are not lossing anything

Egonu is definetely affected by her injury. I can not believe that she plays so bad.

Imoco does not even play really good. If Egonu steps up ( if she can) then they can win.

Εrronu is in again.

Have you even seen Markova play? She has like 100 different ways to score points in different situations. They make her use her reach yes, but she definetely does not rely only in her strengh and she has top level technical skills. Even when she will start lossing her power, she will stay at the highest level, because she is super tall...

Also Zhu is still one of the best OH's in the world. When she is healthy, she's easily top 5 for a lot of people, player and coaches.

I just realised that if Vakif win the next match, then the next time that we'll see Arina play will be after... 6 or 7 months. The same goes for Marina after the final four of CL. It's such a shame.

Quote from Realista

Zhu Ting at the 2016 Olympics scored 22ppg on +50%/40% attack rate/attack efficiency - that was until Markova the best left wing spiker ever in my eyes. Now, obviously there's a difference in overall importance of the events, and OG 2016 is like a legendary carrying job (and Zhu was also a cornerstone of Vakifbank in her glory days as well) - but Markova this year may be even better in terms of pure level of pos. 4 attack.

Peak Kim could be a more impactful player overall, and there's the whole group of all-round players from the modern era and names like Sun Yue, Sokolova, and so on, up to Gabi now, but I was strictly talking about the offense, and left wing attack more precisely. And there, Markova really may be the one.

Zhu at her prime was the only player that manage to play at this level. I thought it again and I could say that they were at a similar level. Zhu was less impressive, but I think that she did almost no errors. Not that Markova is prone to errors but I think that Zhu was even less. When it comes to the other parts of the game, hence reception, defense, blocking and serving Marina is definetely better, but Zhu... As I said before she had the ability to do not give errors at any cost. At least this is what I remember. The Rio Olympics is an other matter. Zhu was almost fully coverved at the reception back then.

Quote from Bogdan

It is definitely time to start this narrative. There still will be many people claiming some historic names, but i will vote for Markova any day.

Me too. I've never seen anyone like her before and it's not only that. Generally her reception it's pretty good/solid and today she had the most succefull defenses after Ayca and Gulce... Also her block is SCARY.

In my opinion, as an attacker Vargas has only ONE FLAW.... She does not know when and mostly how to tip properly... All her tips are easily defended and they are like 80% point for the opponent. I think that it's where all her unforced errors cam from. She often hits hard balls that's obvious that they can not be killed.

If Vakif wins in the next match, at Fener's home.... It will be so harsh...

Quote from nina011

Is Orro still injured or did he decide to simply bench her?

She did a good match, but I think that he just bench her in order to use both Ana Cristina and Korneluk.