copravolley

Recently the FISG has invested heavily in women's hockey: further naturalizations, long 1/2 month training camps in Canada and the USA. The result is that we're at the same level as Slovakia, or even slightly better. Worse still, men's hockey has no plans for improvement and Jalonen alone won't be able to do miracles with such weak players.

In 2000 and 2004 were a great period for Italian team sports: we even could to qualify 7-8 teams for the Olympics: football, basketball, volley x 2, pallanuoto x 2, baseball, softball...

Just like in hockey NT team?

Is baseball in Italy getting weaker lately? When was the last time we played in the Olympics? In 2000? We have much better in softball in last some years.

So we shouldn't worry about a possible defeat today and it won't negative affect for our chances of participating in the 2028 Olympics?

Who is favourite: Italy or France?

Poland has a fundamental problem: outside of women's speed, it's practically doesn`t exist in other forms of this sport and even in women's speed, they only has one dominant athlete- Miroslaw, who is over 30. Other women are strong, but they don't guarantee medals. In men, Poland probably only has one athlete in the wide top- Dzienski. I wonder why they are only successful in women's speed, while in other forms of the sport, they have a huge prpblem to even enter into the top 16 at the World Championships/World Cup.

Austria- the actually male dominant in ski jumping and former female powerhouse, has essentially collapsed in women's ski jumping: Pinkeling's injury, Kramer and Jaqueline's end of careers... They are left with two girls from the wide top : Eder and Muehlbacher. For of today, I don't see them competing for a medal in mixed doubles, even considering the excellent form of their male team. Individually, of course, Eder has very little chance of winning a medal. It's very strange that a powerhouse like Austria has fallen so far in such a strong sport for many years. https://www.instagram.com/p/DO-c80pgvti/?img_index=1

Emma Hunt doesn't seem to have the good mental forse for this sport... I think the USA should look for other people with a better mental or help Hunt solve her problem with a sports psychologist?

Belgium played their worst match of the World Champ, but that was to be expected. We haven't played anything special since the match against Ukraine: solid playing with limited errors, better service and blocking. However, if we want to beat Poland, we need a much better attacking efficiency than today: only 47%.

Romania shouldn't complain, becouse they made enormous progress in recent years thanks to our coaches, who have now returned to Italy and taken our team. I hope they will do the same here by 2028, because until now in OG we could only count on 1-2 medals and very rarely on gold, like LWX2 in Tokio.

Spain just overtook us Will we reach 10 gold medals this year? We have a terrible ratio of gold medals to medals overall: with 31 medals won, we have only 7 gold and France with 32 medals has 10 gold medals. It's a post-Olympic year, so it's just a curiosity, but unfortunately this is our big problem in most summer or winter editions of the Games.

La qualificazione di per sé non è un gran risultato, ma il Kazakistan è una squadra molto più forte della nostra da diversi anni. È strano che il Kazakistan abbia dovuto giocare i playoff...

I'm feeling very fear before tomorrow match – I felt something similar before Italy's match against Poland in the Women's World Champ. in quarterfinals. I don't know why, but I'm most afraid of the 1/4 matches Anyway, as is my personal tradition, I won't be watching that match live tomorrow, but I will check the results a little later (I'm glad the match is already at 9:30 CET and there will be less stress throughout the day, unlike our women's team, whose matches started at 1-2 p.m. at the World Champ in Thailand).

Let me ask you a slightly question outside of sport: who is considered the most attractive person in Ukraine: - Levchenko, - Machuchik, - Kostyuk? I'm asking because I see that in the West of Europe (also in Italy), Kostyuk is considered incredibly beautiful person, but in my opinion, compared to the first two, it's really hard to understand (of course, beauty is a matter of taste, etc, etc.). So I'm curious if your criteria are similar, or maybe completely different?

La rinascita del futsal in Italia? https://www.oasport.it/2025/09/live-kazakistan-italia-qualificazioni-europei-calcio-a-5-in-diretta-serve-unimpresa-per-difendere-il-2-1-dellandata/

The Netherlands was also a weaker in M4X in 2022, but then returned to the top in the following years.

But they will probably play without any pression...

Who to Poland?

Until 2006 we regularly stood on the podium in the men's relay at the Olympics: the last time we won gold in Turin, but later became a black hole for us, except for one Pellegrino – I could say that the last 10-15 years in Italian cross-country skiing were essentially Federico Pellegrino and almost nothing. Francesco de Fabiani had great potential in the distances, but injuries ruined his career.

So, on paper we have two clear favorites tomorrow: Italy and Poland and two very close matches on Thursday: 50/50%. Although I'm very worried about tomorrow's match against Belgium – the pressure will be intense for us, becouse second consecutive defeat to Belgium at the World Championship would be embarrassing. However, if we win, we can play without any pression, as no one in Italy expects us to beat Poland after our recent matches against them.

Ustjugov? I would agree to Ustjugov joining the Italian National Team for training, but only if he gets our citizenship and starts running for us. I see no reason to help such a some rich federation as Russia, especially during a war. Eiduka is a different story, because the Latvian federation is poor, and she has no one to train with her: she used to train with Poland, then Norway and now Italy. Poor girl, having to wander around Europe her whole life

Last year, I read that Ustjugov wanted to train with the Italian NT and Markus Cramer- his former coach, but it didn't happen. Cramer only consulted with him online, but this year, Patricia Eiduka from Latvia joined to the Italian NT training program.

A few years ago, I read that Berlusconi visited Putin in Crimea- but in that time he no longer held any office in Italy. In theory, should he be banned from entering Ukraine? Another thing: what`s with testing anti-doping athletes from Russia after 2022? After all, no WADA inspector will be going to Crimea now, so they can essentially feel unpunished there and dope as much as they want.

Generally, there was no social media in that time and there weren't many sports forums: more chat rooms or something similar. But I remember stumbling upon one such public forum in English around Athens in 2004, but I didn't write down the address and couldn't find it again. Or maybe it was so long ago that I just imagined it