Italvolley, defeat in tie-break with France
Italy-France 2-3
First loss for Italvolley in Volleyball Nations League 2-3 (23-25, 25-18, 23-25, 25-19, 10-15) to Andrea Giani’s Olympic champions France. Race with two faces, with the French good at managing and winning the first and third sets, leaving room for the Azzurri in the second and fourth before the tie break won by France. Good performance by Clevenot among the French, best scorer with 19 points, as many as Michieletto. 20 service errors for an Italy good at the wall, 12 those grounded, Russo’s personal best 4.
Italy loses 7.4 ranking points with today’s defeat, dropping to fourth behind the USA, the Azzurri’s next opponents. The lead over Serbia, the first non-qualifier for Paris 2024, out of the useful places in the ranking, and winner today with the Netherlands, drops to 106.87. In less than 24 hours, at 4:30 p.m. local time (10:30 p.m. Italian time) Italy will be back on the court with the USA. The match will be broadcast on the DAZN platform and on VBTV.
Coach De Giorgi commented as follows: "Some è it was good that France took them, others in my opinion we conceded them, however we struggled in the sense that the match was known to be complicated but we è lacked pò of quality, of continuity; in quality; becauseé in my opinion we have in some manageable situations we conceded something. It’s now a matter of catching up, doing those things better in tomorrow’s game.
We don’t have to look at the ranking, we have to look at the game. Today if we lost è becauseè some things in the game we didnè t do them so well so let’s forget about the ranking. The ranking è a consequence of how you play. Tomorrow with the U.S.A. will be a tough game, they are a very good team, they are full team now, they play with great pace, so it will be a good challenge tomorrow as well as è it was today. We have to be nicely charged because è there will be a battle tomorrow”.