Coach’s words Andrea Diana in view of game 1 of the Playoff quarter-finals of the Serie A2 Old Wild West championship with Trapani Shark who will play against Assigeco Piacenza in the first series. “Do I feel this sense of responsibility? Absolutely not, but instead there is a strong desire within me and the boys to demonstrate why we are here. Each of us was chosen with an objective that we all know, that of arriving in Serie A. I think each of us can’t wait to take the field on Saturday to demonstrate our value”, Diana said in the press conference.
Towards the playoffs: the last training sessions and rotations. “There were two weeks of preparation for the playoffs, the objective was to be ready on Saturday: it was also a progression in terms of workload. We started very strong, now we are polishing the last details. Weeks that were used to insert even more Gentile and Alibegovic in the mechanisms and to prepare the team to arrive ready. Will the rotations be restricted? Are these indications that the pitch has given you in these matches so far, I have always tried to ride the players who are most inside the match there were predefined rotations that I didn’t like. The strength of this group is the number of players we have on the roster, I will even have to choose two to keep out of the 12. This could be our strong point: from day one I said that we need everyone’s availability, as has been the case up until now.”
The opponent. “Piacenza is a team that plays with a lot of spirit, they have come together a lot after Miller’s injury. The group of Italians have taken responsibility and raised their performance. For our part, we are privileged to have finished first, we want confirm this position in the playoffs. Everyone thinks we are the favourites, within us there is a great desire to demonstrate our work. We will find teams who have nothing to lose and will play their best cards to try to beat us: it is everyone’s challenge. I expect a team that will play lightly in terms of pressure, a team that has won the playoffs in the last two games. For our part, to maintain this solidity demonstrated so far we will have to raise the level of defensive intensity even more in the playoffs in the end, whoever has a strong and continuous defensive consistency over the 40 minutes wins. There is great desire and desire to demonstrate what we are worth.”
