Hike a hat-trick and get ready for Tokyo

On May 28, the third in the history of the men's Volleyball League of Nations - the main competition of national teams before the Olympic Games in Tokyo - started.

The best national teams of the world will play each other in Rimini, Italy for five weeks, and the four best teams will play in the final round and play for the title.

The only winner of the League of Nations is still the Russian national team. She won sweepstakes in 2018 and 2019. In 2020, the tournament did not take place due to the coronavirus pandemic, which at the same time canceled all other competitions for national teams. So the importance of the current League of Nations cannot be overestimated - this is the first full-fledged tournament for all international volleyball in almost two years, and even taking place two months before the long-awaited Olympics.

The coach of the Russian national team Tuomas Sammelvuo will have to solve two problems in the near future - to win the League of Nations for the third time in a row and to decide on the squad for the Games in Tokyo.

The second one can be more difficult than the first one.

Even the preliminary application of the team barely contained all the high-class players who had a worthy club season, and by the end of July the composition will have to be reduced to 12 volleyball players.

Victory over the inimitable Dutchman

With the huge choice of players that Sammelvuo has, before the start of the League of Nations, the team still suffered one tangible loss.

Blocking Ivan Yakovlev was injured in training and could not go to Rimini.

Two years ago, he entered the symbolic team following the results of the League of Nations, so he could safely count on a place at the base.

Yakovlev can recover by the Olympics, but he will not be in the national team for more than a month.

The first match of the Russian national team in the League of Nations against the Netherlands clearly showed how important individual players are in volleyball.

This team was not supposed to participate in the tournament, but took the place of China, which refused to travel to Italy.

This gave a chance to prove himself to the Dutch captain Nimir Abel-Aziz - one of the heroes of the last draw of the volleyball Champions League.

The first two sets were quite calm for the Russian national team. Maxim Mikhailov consistently scored points, Ilya Vlasov and Artyom Volvich worked on the block, and the team did without the help of Dmitry Musersky, Dmitry Volkov and Viktor Poletaev. But in the third game, Abel-Aziz made Russian volleyball players nervous. As soon as he was on the serve, he scored six points in a row, while making four aces. In order to win back such a solid loss, Sammelvuo's wards were not quite ready and did not tear their veins to save the set.

In the fourth game, Abel-Aziz brought his team eight more points, eventually earning 29 points for the match.

But now he was successfully opposed by Mikhailov, who had nine effective actions.

Wolwich showed that he can serve well, too, and made three aces.

The game ended with a score of 25:20, and the Russian national team began to play in the League of Nations with a victory.

Lesson for youth Alekno

Further, the Sammelvuo squad was expected to meet with the future participants of the Olympics - Iran and Japan.

In Tokyo, the Russians will be in different groups with them, but they will be able to intersect in the playoffs, so it was imperative to assess the capabilities of the two Asian teams in the Nations League.

True, in the match with the Iranians it did not quite work out.

Their head coach, the former mentor of the Russian national team, Vladimir Alekno, did not share such important information and released the youth team against compatriots, and left all the leaders in reserve.

At the same time, the meeting still turned out to be quite difficult, because the Iranian youth team is the reigning world champion at its age.

After the victorious first set, the Russians briefly turned off their serve, ceasing to create problems on it.

The Iranians seized on this chance and were able not only to impose a struggle, but also to level the score in the parties.

But Sammelvuo's wards did not allow such liberties anymore, and in the next two games the Russians were already stronger.

The replacement of binders allowed Denis Bogdan to improve the attacking game and open up - in the absence of Volkov, the vacancy of the second outplayer was still open in the team, and with his 13 points he showed that he was ready to take the initiative.

The most productive in the Russian national team was again 33-year-old Mikhailov, who scored 22 points.

Tie-break loss

The Russian national team ended the first week of the League of Nations with a match against Japan, which brought the biggest surprise of the two days and won the matches against Iran and the Netherlands.

For the game with the hosts of the Olympics, Sammelvuo decided to release a new blocker, Ilyas Kurkaev, instead of Vlasov, and returned Yaroslav Podlesnykh to Kluka to play.

Castling as a whole did not affect the state of the national team, but she suddenly had one problem - almost the entire team had no serve. Very often the ball flew out-of-bounds, and Kluki's only two aces were just happy rebounds from the net. The Japanese caught the courage at the expense and brought him to victory with a score of 28:26. In the second set, the serve was still terrible, but the Russians no longer allowed the opponent to break away, and in the end Mikhailov showed character. He brought the most important points, which helped to win the game with a mirror score.

Mikhailov kicked off the third set as well, so the team was six points ahead for some time. But even more benefit to the team was brought by Kurkaev, and in the end the party remained with Sammelvuo's wards. The Russians were leading most of the fourth set too, but after the second technical timeout, the team was knocked down by several mistakes by Bogdan. The Japanese national team in character won five points in a row and evened the score in the parties. In the tie-break, she did not have to try very hard - the mistakes of the Russian team were enough to finish the fifth set in her favor.