Even before the European Championship quarter-finals against Italy, volleyball national coach Andrea Giani didn't want to hear from “young, wild” players in his team.

"They are young, but already experienced players," emphasized the 51-year-old.

Actors like the middle blockers Julian Krick and Anton Brehme, both only 22, or Libero Christian Zenger, 24, have been "there since 2017".

Achim Dreis

Sports editor.

  • Follow I follow

Conversely, this also leads to the abandonment of the thesis that “carefree” could be a key to the success of his team. And it was precisely this key qualification that the Germans actually lacked in the knockout game against the representation from Giani's home country: The team seemed inhibited and could at no time exert pressure on the opponent, who were 3-0 (25:13 , 25:18, 25:19) prevailed.

Even the first sentence felt like a knockout blow, especially after old star and leader Georg Grozer had to leave the floor due to a knee injury. With the 36-year-old in the position of the diagonal attacker, not much had been achieved up to 10:17, and after that until 13:25. In the following two sentences, too, player Jan Zimmermann had great difficulty sorting through the seemingly disordered acceptance game of his colleagues in order to be able to initiate at least a few promising attacks. But the pressure to attack that arose out of necessity was far too low to cause difficulties for the Italian assumption, which was firmly established in the saddle. The Germans were only able to convert 39 percent of their attacks into points. In contrast, 56 percent were on the side of the Italians,who were also able to score in other areas of the sport, which is in love with statistics: 4: 0 aces and 10: 2 block points illustrate the direction in which the game was going.

Giani praised the "high quality" of the Italian style of playing, for which one of his long-time companions was responsible.

The Italian head coach Ferdinando De Giorgi was a setter at the height of Italian volleyball together with Giani in the 1990s and became world champions three times in a row.

The now 59-year-old had only taken over the national team this year and actually called up a young and wild team that is only 23 years old on average, but plays very impressively.

In seven European Championship games so far, the Squadra Azzurra has only given two sets.

Even against defending champion Serbia, she will not go into the semi-finals on Saturday in Katowice without a chance.

The Germans would have gladly taken the step to where world champions Poland and European championship runner-up Slovenia compete in the second semifinals.

But the hurdle quarter-finals was insurmountable.

Giani emphasized that his players had played closer to the top teams in Europe.

But in order to really be able to keep up, “we have to go a little further”.

Germany had only won silver in the European Championship under Giani's leadership once: it was in 2017, at his first tournament as the coach in charge, when some of its current regulars were actually still “young and wild”.