And the 48 year old Frenchman Stéphane Antiga is the new coach of Savino del Bene Scandicci. The transalpine coach replaces Massimo Barbolini, who will continue his career in League One Volleyball in the States.
Antigà enjoyed a great career as a player: with his national team he won the bronze medal at the 2002 World Cup in Argentina and won two silver medals in the 2003 and 2009 European Championships. At club level he played in Paris for nine seasons , winning seven championships, four French cups, a Champions League, a Cup Winners’ Cup and a European Super Cup. After his long militancy in the French championship, Antiga left his native country and landed in the Italian Serie A1, being signed by Cuneo for the 2003-2004 season. After a single year spent in Italy, Stéphane Antiga enjoyed three successful seasons in Spain.
After retiring as a player, Antiga immediately began his career as a coach, being chosen as coach of the Polish men’s national team, a selection which the Frenchman led to victory in the 2014 world championship. In 2017 he became the coach of Canada. Then the return to Europe to coach the Polish team ONICO Warszawa. Starting from the 2019-2020 season she began working, again in Poland in the women’s sector, joining Developres Rzeszów, which she led to victory in the 2021 Polish Super Cup and the 2021-2022 Polish Cup.
Stéphane Antiga, who has already had the opportunity to get to know the staff at his disposal, expressed great enthusiasm for this new professional experience: “Arriving in Scandicci for me is certainly a beautiful adventure and a great challenge. I am happy to discover the Italian league, where the level is higher than the Polish league in which I have coached for the last five years. Savino Del Bene Volley is a team with ambition and very well organised, it was very nice to see what they did this season with the second place achieved in the regular season and the championship final played playing very well against Conegliano. I would like to continue the work that Massimo Barbolini and all of his staff have done in recent years and I would like to bring something further. It will be nice to participate in the Champions League again this season, which is a competition that makes you dream and in which I would like the team to be able to go even further, so this will also be an objective. I’m very happy and can’t wait to get started!”
