Simone Anzani charges Italvolley for in-or-out challenge with Ukraine

The day after the defeat to Belgium, concentration is high in the Azzurri for tomorrow’s decisive match against Ukraine scheduled at 3:30 p.m. with live coverage on Rai 2, Raiplay.it, Rainews.it, DAZN, VBTV. The Azzurri will have to win to continue their journey in this 21st edition of the rainbow event; the stakes are high, but while there is an awareness of the risks, there is also an awareness of their own value as told by the group’s veteran Simone Anzani in his fourth world championship: “Just as we have won so many matches in our career, we have lost just as many; in my opinion, we need to analyze what went wrong, but at the same time we should not wrap our heads too much or get too many negative thoughts because it is not useful.”

The blue central then continues: “Tomorrow’s match represents our “sixteenth final,” it will be an inside or outside match, we know that you can run into a defeat like yesterday’s because they are a team with valuable players who have been playing at a high level for many years. Maybe we approached it not in the best way and, as I have repeated many times, in today’s men’s volleyball there are no more easy matches or matches that are too difficult, if you don’t play carefully and with a consistently high technical level you risk losing and that’s what happened to us yesterday. At one point we managed to buffer the difficult situation, but in general there is food for thought, but at the same time we are aware of our strength and what needs to be done tomorrow to pass the group stage.”

The vice-captain then concludes, “My feeling is that maybe we did not expect such an aggressive Belgium capable of doing a great defensive phase; they were really good at touching so many balls, getting to every area of the field, winning so many long actions and this impressed and destabilized us a bit. Ours is a technical sport, when things don’t go well you have to improve on that aspect and we didn’t do that; that put us in trouble; we are big, big and inoculated to know how to react to a defeat; each of us will analyze our own aspects and then go out on the field tomorrow to bring the victory home and pass the round.”