On Thursday, the Polish national volleyball team won with Thailand 3-2 after an exciting match in the League of Nations. Another competitor is the Olympic champion from the United States. – For the first time during the tournament, we are trying to look at it from a different angle – to see how we attack the American system, not how we defend ourselves against them – reveals Stefano Lavarini, the Polish coach.
This was probably the most exciting match your team played in the League of Nations this year. You were losing 0:2 already, you had to build your team on the field from scratch, change the position of Martyna Czyrniańska and bring peace to the team at the end of the tiebreak. How do you rate the meeting with Taji?
Stefano Lavarini: – It was a very difficult meeting. I wasn’t expecting we could start this badly. We had a fairly clear picture of the problems and difficulties we might have in the match against Thailand. Only in the second half of the first group did we start playing volleyball and adapting to the conditions of the field. It is too late to make up for the loss to competitors. It was also not easy in the second part of the match. We were walking point to point. But in the end, we didn’t deserve to win that hand. The situation became very difficult. She told the girls that playing the first two matches of a given tournament with Asian teams has always been a challenge. At this point we were losing 0:5 against the Asian players. Maintaining faith in the possibility of reversing the game was not easy. So the best thing on Thursday was that we were able to find the quality levels to get back into the game, which is always difficult after 0-2.
Joanna Wołosz admitted after the match that she sometimes had a lot of problems playing. It has not appeared in such numbers before, especially in the context of the central regions. What was behind it?
– It all depends on the consistency and consistency of our game. In addition, there is also time for training, and we did not have much with Magdalena Jurczyk. You can’t be sure of the quality of your game if you haven’t worked with a group for a long time. Playing matches in such a situation is a given. At the same time, you need to be patient and understand that the feeling for the game will not come by itself, and on the other hand, try to win the game. These are not comfortable conditions for feeling the rhythm. In the end, communication with the middle was good enough to win the match against Tajki. It was enough for today. We have to take the positives and be happy that the mid-zone attack was effective and helped us get back from 0:2.
The United States of America is a few Olympic medalists who made it back to the list and were not in the first stage of the League of Nations. How do you prepare to compete with such a team when you are managing an inexperienced team without a main striker?
– On Thursday we watched some videos with individual actions of some players. Most of those in Quezon City did not participate in the first tournament. So we don’t have a lot of games they played together as a team. They only faced Bulgaria, which they won 3-0. However, coach Kirali showed in the first installment of the VNL Clash that every match can revolve around the team. So we must be prepared for the fact that such a team, which went to the field in the match with Bulgaria, will not appear on the field in the match with us. Moreover, the volleyball players who will play with us may not have appeared in the first part of the League of Nations. So I try to extract the most important features of individual players and present them to the team. Fortunately, many Americans play in Italy, so I have materials to allow me to prepare for Friday’s game. For the first time during the tournament, we try to look at it from a different angle – to see how we attack the American system, not how we defend against them. The United States is a team that plays breaking point positions in a particular system and everyone who enters the team is included in it. This gives you the basics of knowing how to attack your opponents. So we’re looking at solutions in the attack that we’ll be able to use on Friday. It will be a challenge because we finished a period of matches, after which I complained a little bit to the girls about the offensive side. They tried to score points with simple attacks, not a combination. It may have worked with Thai women, but it won’t work with the United States. So we try to prepare as best as possible.
* The entire conversation is on the site sport.tvp.pl
