Italians force the Britons to stay winless in the Olympic competition – Volleyball News
Italy men’s volleyball team provided a hard knock to the hosts Great Britain in the third match of the Olympic Tournament at the Earls Court on Thursday.
Britons lost the match in front of more than 11,000 spectators. Visiting Italian squad posted 3-0 (25-18, 25-18, 25-20) win over GB team and improved to 2-1 in the tournament. The hosts dropped another chance to delight the home fans with victory in the
Olympic Games. In the next run, Team GB will be challenged by Poland, while Italy will take on Australia.
Ivan Zaytsev of Italy scored match-high 13 points. He was followed by Michal Lasko and Emanuele Birarelli with 11 points apiece.
Equipped with stupendous support of local fans, the home team opened the match on a good note. Powerful serves coupled with convincing attack attempts helped the hosts to score good points. They pushed Italy behind and picked up one-point lead at the first
technical timeout. As the game resumed after the TTO, Italians regrouped and came up with a better plan. They varied the length of serves and also scored points on tricky bump passes. GB men fought bravely, but failed to stop the counterparts. Italy went up
and took the control of operations. Britons trailed behind and eventually suffered the loss of set-1.
Local team opened the second set in the same fashion and jumped to an early lead. The fans screamed out their lungs and made huge noise to support the team. Britons displayed good action on the net and kept Italy in chase for quite some time. Nevertheless,
the resilient rival bounced back and regained better position. Italy came from behind and took the score by storm. The visitors proved to be better and ended with another set-win, which moved Italy to 2-0 in the match.
Third set also came successful for Italy and the match ended in guests’ favour.
Italian Head Coach Mauro Berruto commented: “We got three points that we wanted and that we need to qualify in the top of the pool. We want to keep on improving, these opponents were different than the others, we want to use these two matches (against Great
Britain and the upcoming match against Australia) to improve.”
He further added: “Australia plays in a different way and they are physically different to Great Britain. These two matches are very important for us to concentrate more on ourselves than on our opponents. Australia has a great coach, it will be a real match.”
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