booing in europe is not a big deal, most of players get used to it. For example month ago in greece, home crowd boo 14yo girls
Maybe I'm wrong, but these toxic football antics are spreading like a virus as lately, even in sports where these things weren't a thing. A bit concerning and sad. I mean, there's very little to pick from football, let alone the fanaticism of the so-called fans. End of the OT.
We still don't know what the starting lineup would be, but i honestly think Nervini should be benched.
Despite having a solid season in Chieri, her perfomance all summer is just bad.
She looks cooked, which is understandable considering she played every set of every game for Chieri. Still, if this is what she can bring to the table with her current form we have to find different solutions because we can't afford a struggling OH on both sides of the net.
What is happening to Gaia's passing?
It's beyong terrible at this point. She is supposed to be the defensive OH.
Block-defence correlation seems a bit better though, so I hope this bad passing seen today is circumstantial and not something to be worried about.
Tragic for Omoruyi, just tragic, especially considering she was coming off a solid season. It looks like Velasco is considering dust off Antropova as OH, at least from what I'm seeing roght now.
Vakıfbank announced Monika Brancuska
She may have claimed the title for the shortest tenure with a club, wasn't she announced by UYBA at the beginning of the summer? 
This is a very interesting experiment with Blengini in a female volleyball: he's an elite coach, and he's super versatile tactically considering he was multiple times super efficient with these odd, 3-OH systems in Civitanova or Bulgaria NT.
I don't think that Milano has a roster good enough to contend realistically for major trophies, but it's certainly something interesting to see for someone following both male and female vballs.
I'm still bitter about that 2016 Olympics final and overall about his stint with the NT, so my take may be affected by that, but I'm not sold on Blengini. He's a perfect fit for a team with a young coure that has to rebuild, but I'm less keen to give him the lead of a team that fights for titles. Still, if Bernardi was able to coach in Serie A1, why not Blengini?
What's happening with Gargiulo?
He played the First weekend of VNL and then left the team for personal reasons...
Does anybody know what's going on?
It has to be something really bad if personal reasons forced him to miss the rest of NT season, so I understand if everyone is keeping it low.
All the best to Omoruyi and I don't mean to make fun out of her injury, but it's quite ironic that she joined the team both in 2024 and 2025 due to injuries of Degradi, and thanks to that she won WCH and OG, and now she's probably out 9 days before the tournament herself. I guess that's life and sports in a nutshell.
Life can be a bad bitch sometimes, I'm afraid there's a big chance she'll miss the entire next season... Just terrible to see. Plus, I can't believe our luck with OH position, the pool is as dry as the the Po river during August and it's getting even drier now.
Last time I posted something Antropova as OH was still a thing so... It's been a while indeed. As much as surprised I was to see Velasco betting in such transition, it wasn't as shocking as seeing ending the experiment in such an abrupt way. Week 3 and mostly VNL knockout phase would've been much better and bigger tests, but I guess various things didn't align as the coach expected. Coverage was ok, but second touch is nowhere near the one De Gennaro was able to provide, so break point phase wasn't a factor. Plus, the mental effort in playing the position clearly drained Antropova much more than anyone expected.
Coming to the overall situation, it's obvious how the starters lifted heavy in the gym and are still in search of rythm. I won't be suprised if we won't get past quarterfinals, but European Championship has the priority, so it's much more important to have the team at its best later on in the summer. I'm a bit concerned about Nervini, because she never had a pause since October and she's looking quite exhausted. Giovannini had a positive contribution off the bench, but she a back row specialist and we need an OH able to hold net duties when needed. Quite concerned about Cambi too, she rarely had a positive match so far and her defence was such a liability.
May I say these rules looks like complete rubbish? They just added confusion and arbitrariness.
Brazilian fans are little emotional, they are hot blooded, and I am saying this in a good way, so I love their enthusiasm for the game. I wouldn't read more than that
No, I mean, it's not like anything bad happened, I just found strange to see such stress for a VNL match, even for the Brazilians.
You can join me to complain about Fersion's second touches , they are awful.
Most of our second touches were quite bad to be honest, it's something where we should work on. It proved costly way too many times.
every time the opponent sideouts, you're allowed to complain
Not when Cambi was on a mission to send all of her attackers to roof blocks...
Brazil (and all others teams lol) hás been losing to Italy. For sure this win Will eleva-te the moral of the team. Isnt like Italy is with a all new team. Antropova, Fersino and Nervini/Loveth can be starter really easy in Italy.
I get it, but it's a VNL match, a pool stage one too, it shouldn't be as stressful as a title match...
Coming to our team, we had some players of the main roster, but it's clearly a B version. I'm happy we seem to have a decent depth, but thinking of a deep run with these girls is more than a stretch. Omoruyi will never be a starter if she won't be able to play through bad moments like Nervini does. Her attacking is quite good, but her passing and consistency are far away from being ok for international level.
I noticed this too! Brazil's energy was like they were playing a final, meanwhile Italy looked quite relaxed like they were just enjoying playing a friendly game
Yeah, it seemed quite weird. On the other hand, glad our girls were able to test themselves in such an atmosphere.
Question to Brazilian users: any chance to see Ana Cristina as opposite in the future? I'm asking because I was from impressed from both opposites.
Well, can I complain today? I mean, maybe about the first set, when we simply didn't show up on the court. No passing, no serving, no defence, no setter. Little by little we entered the game and almost beat Brazil at home, with the B team and with the messiest version of Cambi I've ever seen from a long time at helm. I lost count of the number of times she sent the attacker to certain death... Long live the Meli-Nwakalor duo, it works so much better and doesn't lose much on attacking compared to one formed with Manfredini. Talking about Antropova, I'm less negative about her transition to OH. I mean, defence seems a much bigger problem compared to passing, so I'm not saying it will work out great, but the margin is still there.
One question: I followed the game on a Brazilian TV streaming on YouTube and the overall vibe was like winning was a matter of life or death. Why the game mattered so much for them? It seemed weird to me...
I'm well known to be pessimistic, so I fully understand getting worried and concerned when you see your team playing bad, but I don't think Serbian fans should be that catastrophic. The team has too much talent to not get competitive, Terzić or not.
This is concering tho cuz she is the starter for the A team and the level of setting is below standard and will definitely cost valuable opportunity for break points.
Defense-wise is quite good so far.
It's almost impossible to have the same quality De Gennaro was able to bring I'm afraid, but she can do better for sure. A couple of times she tried to jump set the ball, but at the moment I'd rather focus in setting the most "playable" ball possible and being all about business.
I forgot to mention Nwakalor, 15 points and a good presence overall. If only we had the same prolificacy in making very good MB in other role...
What do we think about Adigwe so far this season? She looks like a girl who can become a great great system player, but not necessarily one you can set trash out of system balls to, even today she's last in sets distribution among spikers.
She lacks 10 centimeters or so to be a go-to kind of player, but I'm pretty sure she'll make the cut for the European Championship. She's very good.
Honestly, this is a much more likeable team for Italy than with the “A-list players”. No offense, but a humble Nervini is better to watch than some diva attitudes Italy use to have something. And really not picking anybody but the whole team..
Diva attitudes? I don't remember anything over the top, but I may have forgotten something... 
I'll take it, I expected to see a little more improvements compared to Bulgaria and that second set was quite bad, but we won the others at 16, 19 and 15. I can't be hard on the girls, they're doing their best and most of the times the mistakes are made because they're so green. I'm pretty sure numbers won't be on my side, but apart from Adigwe and Antropova our serving didn't put much pressure on Turkish passing line, thus our block-defence never really kicked in (ending phases of the fourth set apart). Cambi didn't have a great day overall and even Fersino had a couple of bad second touches, but Nervini had a solid match and Omoruyi, while still far from being stable, is contributing more and more compared to her standard. We'll a lot more to make it competitive against Brazil, but it's been a solid first week so far.
