19 wins, o defeat, 57 sets won and 7 lost. An unbelievable run in the regular season for Trentino this season in the Serie A1. The team coached by Radostin Stoytchev has been on top since the beginning of the championship and it did so without a single loss. It has now a good chance to put its name in the history books of Italian volleyball.
In the past, in the A1 leagues with 14 and 12 teams, only Modena (1989-90) and Ravenna (1990-91) were still undefeated at the 6th round of the return games. Modena lost in the seventh round against Parma 3-0, while Ravenna were still unbeaten until the last round, when they lost at home against Milan (15-7, 6-15, 13-15, 16-14, 13-15) to finish with 25 wins and 1 loss.
If Trentino was to win on Sunday 20 February against Roma, it would get past Modena in this special standings with a 20th consecutive win in regular season and it could go on to try the “perfect season” with 6 games to be played and beat Ravenna’s record. Such feat would make Trento the only team to ever win the regular season of a 14-team top division unbeaten.
Verona’s extraordinary 2003-04 season is not included. In the serie A2, it was the only team to dominate the regular season without ever losing (they had also won the A2 cup).
In the Serie A1, Turin of 1979-1982 realised a “perfect season”, a difficult feat to repeat. From the halfway point of the 1979-80 season to the halfway point of the 1981-82 season, the team did not lose a league game: 26 months and 51 victory, and it stayed undefeated at home from December 15, 1977 to March 10, 1982, when the team coached by Silvano Prandi suffered its only loss in that season against Parma.
In 1980-81, Turin won the league registering 22 wins and no defeats. It’s difficult to compare the chase for the record of Trento with Turin’s achievement. It is said that the League managers of that time were forced to introduce the playoffs in order to counter Turin’s dominance on court, and indeed the playoffs were in vigour from 1981-82.
Piero Rebaudengo remembers it well, he is today an important manager in the International Federation in Lausanne. He was then a setter-spiker of the Turin team.
“In the meantime, the team of President Mosna deserves great praise – said the Director of the FIVB Volleyball Events Department – Trento has also won our prestigious Club World Championships. I am a fan of numbers and records, but I have to admit it is difficult to compare the dominance of today with what could be done at the time. The fact it was a different volleyball is not just a cliché: it is true. Many were the players of the various teams who had real jobs besides volleyball.
Besides, our team was composed of a core of players that knew each other well, they grew up together in the city, not like it happens today taking the best of the International market. There were also special “motivations”. Our president, the Commendatore Zecchini, had invented a special reward for the games. He used to call it “the Martingale” because it linked together the results of two or three games. For example he would double the reward if we’d win three games in a row 3-0 or if we’d beat Panini and Santal away from home…
We all remember how our record ended: precisely against the Santal of Gianni Lanfranco, who is like a brother to me but at the time he was particularly targeted by our fans, given that he had left Turin for our rival Parma. That was a defeat to remember for this too. It’s nice to think that this record in the A1 will be extremely difficult to beat: this is one of the best memories that me and my teammates have of this period in Turin”.
Inferior in terms of numbers, Ravenna’s record was however not less prestigious. The team was coached by Daniele Ricci, the manager was Giuseppe “Peppone” Brusi and it was financed by Ferruzzi Group. The aliens had just arrived in the team from the United States: spiker Karch Kiraly and outside hitter Steve Timmons, two of the strongest foreigners that have ever played in the Serie A. On the wing, Ravenna had its hopes on home-grown youngster, Stefano Margutti, which had the difficult task of playing in diagonal to “King Karch”.
“Everything went our way that year – Margutti remembers, as he is today an entrepreneur but also the amusing director of the blog “Bagher forever” – In the end, we only lost in the fifth set at home against Milan. Our team was permeated by an unbelievable feeling, which I had never felt before and which I never felt after that: we knew we would win, even when we were trailing during games. Steve and Karch were key, they knew how to create a particular pathos for any game, even the one that were granted. They instilled from the very first day the idea that when we won easily we had to do some weight to make up for it. At the first game against Catania, the great home supporters applauded us at the end of the game. I went to Vullo’s room in the hotel and I saw Kiraly on the floor that was doing hundredth of press-ups. “What on earth is he doing?” I asked Fabio. “He said it was far too easy” answered an astonished Vullo. So we all just got on the floor too. And since that day, after every easy game, we followed them in the weight room, where both of them used to go and lift impressive amount of iron… That season, in which we stayed unbeaten until the last game, occurred thanks to these things too, that gave us strength. I learned later that Peppone never stopped all year long to check the kilometres on my car to see if I was going out instead of sleeping”.
