Just under three weeks after starting preparation, Moyashi Garlasco takes the field for the first time, guest of Negrini CTE Acqui Terme. After a difficult start, the neroverdi manage to raise their level of play, however the hosts prevail 3-1, with an extra fifth set that smiles on the Garlacticos who end the evening at 3-2 (25-11 , 25-20, 20-25, 25-22, 22-25).
Coach Bertini: “It’s never too early to try to become a team”
“It was a very interesting race, despite the many initial difficulties – comments Bertini – certainly due to the setting and the different conditions from the usual training, but they also derive from a somewhat soft and perhaps emotional approach, which led us to finish the match 3-1, if we exclude the fifth extra set.”
A match that presented itself as an important opportunity to test the attitude of all the team members on the pitch: “Both teams rotated practically all the players. I committed to putting a spanner in the works a bit, changing a lot and also doing some small experiments, or in any case managing the formations on the pitch in an unstructured way. I believe that this could be a useful method to avoid settling into safe and guaranteed positions right away.”
The biggest obstacles appeared at the beginning of the match, but they were then the impetus to improve the approach and win the third and fifth sets: “There were a lot of difficulties and not too high quality in the first two sets, especially in joke, factors that did not allow us to have great continuity. During the match we reorganized ourselves and, thanks also to a slightly more concrete game, we improved our performance. Naturally it is very early to evaluate the competitive quality, but it is never too early to try to become a team.”
Luis Vattovaz: “We are a new group, the margins for improvement are wide”
Still a lot of work ahead, but the neroverdi want to take advantage of every opportunity to increase the harmony that has already been created during training.
Luis Vattovaz, employed both as middle blocker and opposite, comments: “In general the match went well: our opponents started better, probably because they were at home and are more experienced than us, being a group that hasn’t been much changed compared to last season. In the first set they beat us like hell, but we managed to recover in the following ones, which were very close.”
