Paola Egonu signs Milan’s feat against Conegliano

Milan Numia Vero Volleyball’s feat in the Boxing Day postponement: at the Allianz Cloud, in front of 5,296 spectators and with the arena sold out, the Lombardy women overcame Prosecco Doc A. Carraro Imoco Conegliano, inflicting on the Venetians their first loss of the season in the league and breaking a regular season unbeaten streak that lasted as long as three years. The Consortium team, already able to bend the “panthers” champions of everything in the Super Cup final played in Trieste, granted the encore by winning three very heavy points in the race for the top positions.

Andrea Gussoni

Conegliano had started out better, imposing itself in the first set, but from the second partial onward it began to pay for an excessive number of errors in attack. Milan took advantage of this to restore the balance, then directing the match in the third set, the real pivot of the match. Paola Egonu, the match’s top scorer with 32 points, took the lead in the advantages, while on the other side Isabelle Haak appeared unusually struggling. The 31-29 of the third partial actually marked the turning point: in the fourth set Conegliano gradually raised the white flag, seeing a record-breaking positive series come to a halt.

Thanks to this success Milan moved back to within one length of Reale Mutua Fenera Chieri and two points of Igor Gorgonzola Novara. Precisely the “mosquitoes” will be the next opponents of the Stefano Lavarini-led lineup, which will be back on the court as early as Tuesday at 8 p.m. in Piedmont for the quarterfinals of the Italian Cup, in a dry game. Overall, it was a great redemption for the vice-champions of Italy, who were coming off an ugly four-set loss at home to Vallefoglia.

Eleonora Fersino spoke this way in the postgame: “I am very happy for the match tonight, for the girls, for the staff, for the society, because we showed what we can do. We were coming from a not too positive period, with the loss against Vallefoglia, but we came back to the gym with the right mentality, with a lot of desire to improve and train”.

“In the first set we didn&#8220t get off to a good start, but at the end we had a good reaction; we were then good at imposing our game throughout the match, despite the fact that Conegliano still put us in trouble. I congratulate my teammates, we are very happy.”