In the last twenty years, the world of volleyball has been able to give us great satisfaction. Thanks to Julio Velasco, Bebeto, Andrea Anastasi, Gian Paolo Montali, Marco Bonitta, and Massimo Barbolini we have forfeited gold medals in almost all the competitions in the sector, both men and women. The movement has grown a lot as a result. And volleyball has not only begun to be seen with increasing consistency on TV but has also begun to talk about it. And to write important sentences about volleyball.
Some meaningful quotes helped us to learn more about the protagonists and the philosophy of the various teams.
Precisely for this reason, but also to highlight a sport that for one reason or another we had so far neglected, we have selected five phrases of this type that in our opinion deserve to be read. Phrases among other things written and spoken by some of the greatest coaches that our school (and not only) has been able to produce.
1. Who Wins and Who Loses
Julio Velasco, Marco Bonitta and More
There are phrases that express so much truth in so few words that they become proverbial and end up on everyone’s lips.
This happens with an impressive frequency in the world of sport, in which people not used to speaking in public are continually interviewed and are forced to search for new words to comment on situations that are always repeated similar to each other.
Thus, a beautiful and concise sentence can get out of the way, and once said it is adopted by colleagues. This, at least, is what seems to have happened with the aphorism with which we open our five, “Whoever wins celebrates, whoever loses explains”.
Whoever wins celebrates, whoever loses explains.
A phrase now used by more or less everyone and of which it is almost impossible to be able to find out with certainty who was the first creator. It is certain, however, that the phrase was repeated several times by Julio Velasco, almost like a mantra, and that it was then also adopted by Marco Bonitta, only to remain in the volleyball coaching field.
Also Read: HOW LONG IS A BASKETBALL GAME?
In the case of Velasco it fits well with his philosophy of sport: «Our team – he explained years ago – is now internationally famous for a fact that seems trivial, but it is not: we are famous because we never complain. It seems little, but it is not little ».
«You can check all the newspapers from 1989 to today, it has never happened that after a defeat we said: ‘It was the time difference, we had a player with indigestion, we slept badly, the referee…”. Never”.
“I never said that. Because? Because this way of behaving is also part of the winning mentality. Everyone can explain why one thing has not been able to be done, few are able to do it anyway “.
2. The Spikers and the Lift
Julio Velasco’s Amazing Career
With the previous sentence, we were able to bring you back, in part, to the sporting philosophy of Julio Velasco. A philosophy that is also confirmed by the aphorism that we have identified as the second in our five and that allows us to put the spotlight on the figure of the Argentine coach for a moment.
Born in La Plata in 1952, he began to train at a high level as early as 1979, taking over the Ferro Carril Oeste of Buenos Aires. With this team, he won four consecutive Argentine championships, the first in the history of the sports club, which until then had impressed more for football and basketball than for volleyball.
These early successes earned him the call as assistant coach of the national team, with which he won a bronze at the World Cup.
Spikers don’t talk about the lift. They solve it.
In 1983 he was brought to Italy by Giuseppe Cormio to train Jesi in A2. He then arrived in A1 in 1985 with Modena, where some of the players who, over the years, would become one of the bases of his national team played.
Here he won four consecutive league titles and from there he moved, in 1989, to coach the senior national team, a position he would hold until 1996, before moving on to the women’s one and then taking a short break from volleyball.
With the men’s selection, he has won an unmatched series of trophies, which never before – perhaps in any team sport – Italy had managed to bring home: three European Championships, five World Leagues, two World Cups, one World Cup, and an Olympic silver.
At the base of everything, according to him, the winning mentality we were talking about before, is well summarized also by this second sentence: the winner does not comment on the mistakes of others, but solves them.
3. The Moral Quality of the Coach
The Humility of Silvano Prandi
Of all the great coaches that the Italian school has been able to produce in the last thirty years, Silvano Prandi is the veteran. He has been training at the highest levels since 1976, when he took over the CUS Torino, leading it to win four Italian league titles, a European Cup, and a Cup Winners’ Cup for the first time in its history.
In the meantime, he also took Italy by the hand, between 1982 and 1986, before that generation of phenomena arrived that would have given us so much satisfaction. However, he led the Azzurri to win Olympic bronze in Los Angeles and gold at the 1983 Mediterranean Games.
The coach must have the moral quality to know that the masters are the players, not the other way around.
Also Read: THE STRONGEST FOOTBALL TEAM IN THE WORLD THIS YEAR ACCORDING TO OUR READERS
Despite these enviable successes, which make him one of the most successful coaches in the history of this sport, Prandi has always kept in mind the humility that is needed to face any challenge, not only in the volleyball field: the knowledge that before the coach, who really knows the game is who takes the field.
ALSO DEFEATED SIR ALEX FERGUSON
Such wisdom, on the other hand, could not fail to derive from decades of experience.
In fact, Prandi holds the longevity record as coach of a top-flight team not only in volleyball but in every professional sport, as he has held this position for 38 consecutive years.
Alex Ferguson, to name a famous one, in the world of football only reached the age of 36 among his various teams, before retiring.
4. There Is a Sport Where the Team Is the Absolute Value
The Beauty of Volleyball According to Andrea Anastasi
In a textbook of physical education for middle schools ( Team. Together for sport by Gianluigi Fiorini and Elisabetta Chiesa, Marietti editions) there is a premise signed by Andrea Anastasi. One who was a former coach, on two occasions, of the Italian national team, as well as of Spain and Poland.
One who as a selector has won a World Championship, a European, and a World League (as a player, years before, he had instead won three CEV Cups, a European, a World Cup, and two World Leagues).
In this introduction, the Italian coach talks about the beauty of sport and volleyball in particular, with words that we think are worth reporting in full.
There is a sport where the ball has to be passed. Not out of altruism, out of regulation. There is a sport where the champion, even the strongest in the world, alone is useless. There is a sport where the team is the absolute value. Where only the team allows you to make your dreams come true or not. There is a sport where you are forced to move in a confined space: 81 square meters, within which being in the right or wrong place is a matter of centimeters that make you win or lose a game, a world championship. , an Olympic medal.
There is a sport where a point is scored or conceded every ten seconds. In which the game is a seamless adrenaline rush, from the first to the last second. There is a sport which is a game of chess played at 120 km / h. It is my sport, volleyball, which gives emotions, joys and sometimes disappointments. In one word: passions.
5. A Heart Attack at Disneyland
The Enviable Irony of Beppe Viola
We conclude with a sentence different from the others, which is not so much about the game and the motivation that can be instilled in the players, as much as the irony.
Beppe Viola, for those unfamiliar with him, was one of the best and most intelligent Italian sports journalists. Born in Milan in ’39, he joined RAI in 1961, working mainly as a commentator for football, boxing, and horse racing, but also collaborating with many comedians and artists from Milan or who worked in Milan anyway.
Among these, are Enzo Jannacci – with whom he wrote various songs -, Teo Teocoli, Cochi, and Renato, Paolo Villaggio, and Lino Toffolo.
THE MEMORY OF GIANNI BRERA
Unfortunately, death took him suddenly in October 1982, barely 43 years of age, due to a cerebral hemorrhage while he was editing a report on the Inter match he had just followed.
He was remembered two days later in Repubblica by a touching obituary written by his friend Gianni Brera.
That short article read: “His romantic incontinence was pathetic madness. And I, who above all loved him for this, now feel a remorse that even makes my pain awkward … ».
Breaking a leg with volleyball is like having a heart attack at Disneyland.
His sentence on volleyball that we report is taken from the volume Quelli the…, a collection of old writings by Viola published in the early 90s by Baldini & Castoldi.
In that volume there is also another of his most famous lines, relating to tennis: “Those who would be willing to have 37 and 2 all their lives in exchange for McEnroe’s second serve”.
Leave a Reply