Shoot these days the adventure of Italy by Ferdinando De Giorgi which, barring unimaginable surprises, should end with the Olympic tournament. On the eve of what was supposed to be Tokyo 2020 for the Azzurri, there were all sorts of worries aimed at the absence of receiving hammers with considerable pressure on Osmany Juantorena to convince him to stay in blue despite his desire to leave the national team to stay with his family.
Prayer gave him desired outcomes and everyone knows how it ended, with a painful exit for the Azzurri in the quarter-finals in Tokyo, with the change on the bench, the arrival of De Giorgi, the launch of a handful of young players who went from promising to becoming champions of Europe and the world in the space of a year and now they are aiming for what has always been the forbidden dream of Italian volleyball, the gold in the Five Circles.
The receiver hammer is a problem now, but of abundance because in recent years there are really many (by what are the usual standards) Italians who have shown themselves in this role in the Super League and also in the national team and therefore it will be necessary to make some painful choices when deciding who to bring to Paris.
Three places seem to have already been assigned, two to the undisputed starters returning from a season of very high caliber with Trento but which ended in the worst possible way in Italy (with the double defeat in the semi-final and in the semi-final for third place, awaiting the Champions League final), Daniele Lavia and Alessandro Michieletto and one to Tommaso Rinaldi who, despite having played an alternating season, has achieved the rank of first reserve on the field and De Giorgi will hardly question his presence in the blue team.
To choose the fourth spiker among a roster of extremely interesting names, all players with different characteristics from each other: it will be up to the Italian coach to evaluate what he will have to give to his team. The lot of names is high-sounding, some come from a season as starters, others as reserves but this may not be a discriminating factor because De Giorgi could perhaps rely on those who have been called on several occasions to enter the field to try to change a match or to unblock a situation rather than who has always remained on the pitch, because the role of the fourth spiker in the national team could also just be that of being called into action for a match trying to make the difference. Mattia Bottolo (Civitanova), Davide Gardini (Padua), Giulio Magalini (Trento), Luca Porro (Padua), Francesco Recine (Piacenza), Francesco Sani (Verona) they are the candidates for the role of fourth spiker.
Possible that the shortlist narrowed down to three with Porro, Magalini and Sani who could perhaps be called up in the last week of the Nations League if the qualification situation for the Games has already been resolved. The chances are high that they will therefore be competing for the position of fourth offensive receiver Recine, Gardini and Bottolo, all three with quality to be able to push De Giorgi to call them.
Mattia Bottolo is a player who can give a lot in batting and attack, a little less in the second line fundamentals, Francesco Recine is a player of great depth on the second line (defense and reception) but also fearsome in attack which does not have its main strength in the joke. Davide Gardini is perhaps the most complete of the three. In the first year of the Super League in Padua he played a very good championship, among other things growing with very interesting numbers in all fundamentals. It’s not maybe the man capable of changing matches but when reliability is a certainty.
We will see the first indications after the collegiate season, after the Champions League final and in the first call-ups in view of the Nations League but for now let’s enjoy a battery of spikers to make the other powers of world volleyball envious, many of them young and with ample room for improvement and it doesn’t end here!
