Anna Danesi charges the Azzurre in Macau
The words of Anna Danesi
Julio Velasco’s Azzura women’s team reached in the early Italian morning Macau, home of the 2024 Volleyball Nations League Pool. Bosetti and her teammates in the Chinese leg will face: France (May 29, 10 a.m.), Dominican Republic (May 30, 6:30 a.m.), Brazil (June 1, 6:30 a.m.) and in the last challenge the Chinese hosts (June 2, 1:30 p.m.).
Four challenges in which Italy will go in the hunt for more points to get ever closer to Olympic qualification.At the moment the tricolor formation occupies the 5th position in the World Ranking (343.79 pts.), with an advantage of about 57 points over the Netherlands (286, 67 pts.) to date the first of the teams excluded from Paris 2024.
In the Macau stage, Italy presents a full team, also being able to count on the athletes returning from the Champions League Super Finals. In the overall standings of the Volleyball Nations League, the Azzurri are in fifth place (3 wins and 9 points), in the midst of the race for the Finals to which the top 7 teams in the overall standings will have access, plus Thailand as the host country. All matches of the Azzurri will be broadcast by the global platform DAZN and live streaming on VBTV
Less than forty-eight hours before the challenge against France, these are the words of the Azzurri captain Anna Danesi: "A very difficult pool awaits us, I think that in this VNL no team should be underestimated, I am referring for example to France that represents the new entry of the tournament. I am convinced that on Wednesday they will do everything to put us in difficulty, so we will have to take the court with the right attitude. All the more so it will have to be like that in the following matches against the Dominican Republic and to finish with Brazil and China, which are the strongest opponents of this stage. As in Antalya our goal is to get as many points as possible and take another step towards Olympic qualification. Good results here in Macau would help us to face the last round in Fukuoka with a little more serenity. The next challenges will be useful to find the team mechanisms, considering that with several teammates, coming back from the Champions League Super Finals, we have not played together since 2022. It will take a little time, of course, to reach the best understanding, because it is one thing to work in training, another to face each other in an official match. Overall, I am confident, I have a lot of desire to have fun on the court and I can’t wait for this stage to begin. The 3-1 win in the first week against Turkey, undoubtedly, è was very important not only from the point of view of the result, but also on a mental level: a nice confidence boost for the group. There remains regret for the result against Poland, I am convinced that replaying today, the match would not end with the same score. We paid the tension of the’debut, despite the 3-0 almost all the sets were decided only in the final. On a personal level I am living very well the new experience in the azzurro, being the captain of this team è easy and above all fun".
