Andrea Lucchetta he is never banal in his considerations. Symbol of that “Generation of Phenomena” that changed the history of Italian volleyball, “Lucky” has always remained a young man ready to go to the net and smash everything in order to obtain great results even if this may involve sacrifices and sacrifices.
The former power plant Milan And Modena knows that young volleyball players can do it and for this reason he has decided to push the national team starting from the bottom, working side by side with the Federation and recounting the exploits of our talents within TimeOut Sports Festival in a meeting staged at the PalaPonte in St. Peter’s Bridge.
Aware of the risks that the pressure of having to qualify for the Olympic Games at all costs could bring out Paris 2024 and at the same time perform, Padlock he did not hide and set the primary objectives for the tricolor movement.
What is the current condition of Italian volleyball?
“The post-Covid volleyball situation is interesting because it is one of the few disciplines that has had an implementation of members, thanks also to the work done before the pandemic to broaden the base, also thanks to “spykeball”, the game of slam dunk, which it was created by me together with Mario Barbier and Marco Mencarelli. Two of the minds and coaches who are developing the youth sector of the Federation which has a series of observers to identify athletes who may have space and which for many of them consists of reaching the national team”.
You created a cartoon created by Rai to introduce young people to volleyball. What effects did it have?
“Lucky is a character who animates, through the language of cartoons, an innovative way of playing which is the game of slam dunk. Few rules, but which focus on some identifying athletes. I want to dunk like Pietrini, Egonu, Micheletto or Lavia, in short, I want to dunk. Previously there was a categorical diminutive linked to mini-volleyball which did not create this type of situation which instead led to the expansion of the base and an increase in members. It is no coincidence that the captain of the 1990 World Cup national team and best player of the tournament Andrea Lucchetta found himself commentating on a team with Ferdinando De Giorgi as coach and Andrea Giannelli on the pitch who won a European Championship and a World Cup and this is proof that the volleyball is always the same. The circle of life always leads there and is constant over time.”
So is there a concrete possibility of winning Olympic gold with the teams coached by Julio Velasco and Ferdinando De Giorgi?
“I think both teams are going to win both events. We will certainly qualify for the Olympics and then I hope we can do better beyond the bronze in Los Angeles or the silver in Barcelona and Rio de Janeiro because there are the conditions to win gold for both men and women.”
During his career he got to know Julio Velasco closely. In your opinion, can her arrival on the bench offer a turning point for the team?
“Julio is a coach who needs an implementing and highly operational tool like Massimo Barbolini. He was the assistant coach who created the conditions for the volleyball movement to grow, winning three championships in Modena and obviously launching the first European Championship in 1989. All this helped Julio to gain notoriety, but also to build himself as a coach. Now everything he created must be made available to something that can give peace of mind and a vision of the game. Massimo Barbolini is the right person who can put a disintegrated changing room into a system and allow the athletes to find the uniformity they need to maintain behavior worthy of sporting ambitions. From there the ambitions of a group can be created which together can achieve a result of a certain level. It is no coincidence that De Giorgi was the second setter of Julio’s national team for many years and was able to draw the most positive aspects from a completely different path to the Argentine coach.”
Speaking of De Giorgi, his Olympic experience could it give advantages to the men’s national team?
“No, because De Giorgi’s driving concern concerns his role as a setter. He knows perfectly well what the keys are to handing the team over to Giannelli and managing the locker room in the best possible way. Then you can obviously play well or badly, but this allows the players, often still young and growing, to be able to tolerate that performance anxiety that forces them to win at all costs. It’s one thing to think about winning, another to confirm yourself and another to necessarily have to win. Some players have already experienced the part of the Olympic village with the restrictions related to Covid at Tokyo 2020, however now it will be necessary to train well, qualify and not have too many distractions and be well aware of the fact that we are going there to win the medal gold”.
You have also worked a lot on the Paralympic world. How did this support for sitting volleyball come about?
“Women’s sitting volleyball, thanks also to the process carried out since 2012 and which also enters the history of Lucky with Patty, who is a Spike Team player, and Brent who has a bilateral amputation. The only way to get them to meet was to have them play sitting. This, together with the work of the Federation and with the comments we made together with Maurizio Colantoni, we managed to push this movement by creating an Italian championship which last year won a silver medal at the European Sitting Volleyball Championships and which for he will take part in the Paris 2024 Paralympics for the first time. This is the satisfaction I carry inside me.”
