Gas Sales Bluenergy (Piacenza) and head coach Andrea Anastasi have reached an agreement to terminate their cooperation by mutual consent. This comes while the team is in 5th place in the standings and in the midst of the playoffs. Along with Anastasi, assistant coach Roberto Rotari is also leaving the club. The last straw for the club's management was probably the recent home loss to Radostin Stoychev's Verona. This was the fourth consecutive defeat for the team, whose manager is also Dimitar Zlatanov's son - Hristo Zlatanov.
This is not the first coaching change at Piacenza in recent years. At the end of 2022, the club released Lorenzo Bernardi, even though just two days earlier he led the team to a 3:2 victory over Verona in the Italian Cup 1/4 finals, qualifying them for the semifinals. After Bernardi's departure, Massimo Botti took over the team and in February 2023, he led Piacenza to win the Italian Cup, after a 3:0 victory over Itas Trentino (Trento) in the final.

Now, with Andrea Anastasi's departure, the club is once again faced with the need to appoint a new head coach to lead the team in the decisive phase of the season.
It is not the first time Anastasi has been dismissed after a loss to a team with Bulgarian involvement. In 2013, at the European Championship, where Anastasi was coaching the Polish national team, they were eliminated in the round of sixteen after a dramatic 2:3 loss to Bulgaria, then led by another Italian - Camillo Placi. Following that defeat, the Polish Volleyball Federation decided to release Andrea Anastasi from his position as head coach.