The head coach of the "Squadra Azzurra" men's team with a touching address to everyone on his personal Facebook page

Ferdinando De Giorgi used social media to express his gratitude to everyone who contributed to Italy's participation and preparation for the Paris Olympics. Here's what the great coach also said:

This was a special Olympics for our volleyball community – two teams in the top four places and a gold medal with Julio's girls, who make us proud and successful.

Our Olympic journey had two different moments. The first, until the quarter-finals, was with great intensity, quality, culminating in the historic match against Japan (which "shortened" our lives by 10 years), in which we saw everything from a technical point of view of the character of this team of ours. The second is the semi-final and the third-place match. The match against the French didn't have much history, also because our opponents played the last two matches with exceptional quality, making us and Poland look like small teams. The bronze medal match against the USA had a result that doesn't reflect the balance that existed.

There is bitterness – we worked hard to reach a medal, I especially feel sorry for the boys who, as always, gave their all to achieve the goal, but we neither had luck nor is there an Olympic curse. Our opponents performed better than us... two balls per set... only 2, but better than us! This means we have something to improve.

We are a group that was born in 2021 with a generational change and a holistic way of experiencing the national team from both a technical and a value perspective. For 4 years, we have been excited together to play for medals against teams with an average age of 30, while we are 24. There is a future, there is a project... sometimes I think our opponents hope we will injure ourselves... The result saddens us, but it makes us improve. I have always said that we are not the best, but we want to be the best in the tournament we play in. Our journey makes us proud and pushes us with humility to continue our philosophy of growth in order to win. As always, it's up to us and what we learned from this event!

Thank you, boys, thank you to the staff, thank you to FIPAV and CONI, and thank you all for the love and respect... we will prepare better and better to get excited together again!

Sincerely,

Feffe

photo:volleyball.it