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Italy aim to rekindle glory days
- Updated: April 20, 2016
Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 2016 – It is now an incredible 16 years since Italy last won the FIVB Volleyball World League. Back then the team, led by legendary trainer Julio Velasco, defeated Russia in the final in Rotterdam. Third place in 2000 went to Brazil. 16 years later, these same three nations are among the hot favourites to win the 27th edition of the tournament, and potentially the subsequent Olympic Games in Rio. Italy is on track for a return to the kind of success it enjoyed in its heyday.
“Italy is a different team now. Very solid and really dangerous,” said an admiring Bernardo “Bernardinho” Rezende, coach of the Brazilian national team. This is high praise indeed, as Rezende’s team has been the most successful of the last decade and a half. With three FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship titles in a row between 2002 and 2010, Brazil has dominated the volleyball scene in the same way that Italy did with its hat-trick of titles at the World Championships between 1990 and 1998. Together, these two proud volleyball nations are genuine institutions in the FIVB World League – they are the only teams to have played in every tournament.
Italy and Brazil also dominate the list of all-time winners of the most prestigious annual event in the volleyball world. Brazil has nine wins to its name, Italy eight. However, all of the Azzurri’s success came between 1990 and 2000. From 1989 to 2005, Italy won three World Championships, one World Cup, six European Championships, eight World Leagues and three Olympic medals (silver at Atlanta 1996, bronze at Sydney 2000 and silver at Athens 2004). These glory days for Italian volleyball were followed by a period with little major success. However, the team has gradually worked its way back into the world elite in recent years.
Bronze at the London 2012 Olympic Games was followed in 2013 and 2014 by two bronze medals in the FIVB World League. Last year, Italy also claimed its third medal in a …
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