On Saturday afternoon, Milan had the better of Verona at the tie-break in its first outing of the season. Both clubs were missing important players, still committed to their national teams.
The hosts dominated the first set with Marretta’s spike sealing it. Verona fought back to take two sets, both concluded with blocks from Savani and Bellei. In the fourth, coach Monti reshuffled his cards and sent a totally different line-up. Verona initially led until Milan tied it at 11 and then kept the lead to tie the game at 2-2. In a hard-fought fifth set, Milan had to wait for its fourth match point to win the game 18-16 on a Burgsthaler spike.
“This was only a friendly game at the start of the season, nothing more – said coach Monti – We played with determination and proved we could do fine. In my opinion, we played a good first set, then we lost our way, to be honest we’re not used to the fast paced game put in play by Baranowicz, we found it hard to handle it. But we did a great job to recover in the end. The more we play the better but we’ll lose Russomanno who will go to Brazil for the Military World Championships, and that makes it difficult for us even to play friendly games”.
