A few days before the match between Vero Volley Monza and WithU Verona, valid for the seventh day of the return of the Regular Season of SuperLega Credem Banca, the Gialloblù assistant coach Dario Simoni spoke at the press conference, presenting Sunday’s match.
These are his words: “We expect a difficult game, as this championship has taught us. We face a team that plays very well at home, relying on important players. They have momentarily lost the opposite, but can count on a good-level replacement. Furthermore, they have a very strong free thrower and three quality central players. Victory with Lube? I think the important thing was the points made. There could have been three, we played an excellent game and unfortunately we went to the tie-break. It wasn’t obvious to win at all, so we did really well. It gave us morale, but we mustn’t forget that we are also the ones who lost in Taranto three weeks ago. We must continue to work with intensity”.
Coach Stoytchev’s right-hand man continued: “Every game seems like a huge boulder: winning would take us to the top, losing would be a decent problem. Sunday’s match will develop in progress, also because we don’t know if Grozer will eventually take the field or not. For this reason we must be tactically ready and prepare ourselves for the eventuality that he is there. During the week we build our game based on the opponents, we work and adapt to a precise tactical idea of the match”.
Later, he spoke of the Keita solution as the opposite: “There are two differences. The first is that Keita attacks with a completely different speed than Sapozhkov, so the opponent’s wall has to move differently. The second is that the setter knows he has a player with different characteristics and can vary the distribution.
Then the opponents can find themselves displaced when serving, having to change targets. This is one more weapon that we know can work. Monza has a very strong battery of spikers, the other players give an important balance. The match will be decided on the fundamentals of receiving and serving. With the average height of the players we have, we need to be able to have more efficiency against the block, but a lot depends on the serve.”
