Paola Egonu and the Azzurre give Serbia no chance

Peremptory victory for Italy in last test match before World Cup

The Italian women’s national team closed the DHL Test Match Tournament – Road to World Championship in the best possible way, overcoming the world champions Serbia with a dry 3-0 (25-14, 25-22, 25-18).

In front of the splendid crowd at PalaVesuvio, as many as 4,000 fans in the stands, the European champions dominated the match, in what was the last outing before the big event of the year: the 2022 World Championship in the Netherlands and Poland (September 23-October 15).

Fifteen points were scored by Paola Egonu, top scorer ahead of Bosetti, 13, and Danesi, 12. Italy got off to a great start and with a portentous partial sprinted to the (10-1). The heavy disadvantage weighed on the shoulders of the Serbs who never managed to react, while Mazzanti’s girls dominated far and wide (25-14).
The second fraction was more hard-fought, Egonu and her teammates tried again to run away (17-11), but the opponents were able to get back in touch (17-16). For a few actions the set remained in balance, then Italy accelerated and closed on (25-22). The third partial saw a hard-fought start (9-8), until once again Mazzanti’s girls set their own pace (15-12). After taking the lead the European champion national team administered the advantage and the match ended with the score of (25-18). The Azzurri finished in second place at the DHL Test Match Tournament – Road to World Championship, behind Turkey today’s 1-3 (10-25, 25-23, 18-25, 20-25) winner over Poland.

These are the words of coach Mazzanti: “It was definitely the best performance of the competition, our wall-defense phase worked perfectly. Analyzing the three matches we can say that ours was a tournament on the rise, also considering the fact that we met three great teams. Each match was different from each other and this gave us the opportunity to confront different difficulties, allowing us to grow. This is the third time I’ve come here to Naples, I’ve gotten to know these people and certainly the crowd’s cheering has given us that magic and sense of patriotism that will give us even more charge ahead of the World Cup. We are Italy and we will try our best to make our fans happy.”