Last chance saloon

9th July 2010

© Nula, wikipedia.org The Polish Volleyball team is now playing for pride Share:

Poland’s volleyball team has one last shot at redemption having crashed out of the World League, losing their last three games; twice to Cuba, once to Germany. One game remains with the Germans for Poland to leave the competition with some sense of honour intact.

On Thursday night in Katowice’s Spodek, Poland lost to Germany in five sets, forcing a tie-break but eventually lost to their more consistent opponents.

The tie was given added spice due to the fact that Germany’s coach is Raul Lozano, who led the Polish team to their greatest recent successes. His Polish contacts were betrayed when he got entangled with a Polish cameraman and swore in fluent Polish at him, much to the chagrin of the watching crowd.

Throughout, the Polish crowd in the Spodek were in a raucous and occasionally ugly mood, whistling the Germans with as much vigour as they cheered the Poles. Poland have one more go at the Germans tomorrow night, before ending their participation in this year’s competition.

At the beginning of the week Poland lost twice to Cuba, thus being eliminated from further rounds of the World League. While there was no disputing the Cuban’s dominance as they won easily in straight sets, controversy surrounded the behaviour of their players and led to angry exchanges on court.

“There was some tension at the net, because the Cubans were insulting us, and they were unlucky enough that I understood them, because Spanish and Italian are very similar, and from time to time I answered back,” Piotr Gruszka told Eurosport.

His colleague Grzegorz Lomacz pointed out it was nothing new, “They behaved exactly the same when we played them in Cuba, and they behaved the same in the games with other teams we watched on video.”

Other insults may well have been exchanged when Lukasz Zygadlo was thrown out of the team following a row with coach Daniel Castellani. Zygadlo, who plays as setter for Trentino Volley, regarded the best club side in the world, was relegated to the bench for the match against Cuba last Monday. He then appeared on Polsat Sport complaining that Castellani wasn’t giving him the chance to show what he could do.

The coach’s response was rapid and ruthless. On Tuesday Zygaldo met with Castellani and afterwards packed his bags and left the Katowice hotel where the team is staying, his international career in tatters. Zygadlo was determined to be the first-choice setter for the team, stating openly, “I don’t want to be third-choice setter for the national team.” It appears coach Castellani took him at his word.