17-Nov, start time: 18:05, end time: 19:11 - Attendance: 2,660

VEN	0	21	15	15	-	-	51
ITA	3	25	25	25	-	-	75

Match Description:

Inspired Sartoretti Leads Italy to Victory over Venezuela
European champions Italy made it two wins from two at the men's World Cup of Volleyball when, led by the serving of Andrea Sartoretti, they comfortably fended off the aggressive challenge of Venezuela to triumph 3-0 at Site B in Nagano.

The Italians were just too organized in defense and offense for their South American opponents as they continued their positive start towards Olympic qualification with a 25-21, 25-15, 25-15 win to add to their comfortable victory over Tunisia on the opening day. It was Venezuela's second defeat following their loss to France, when they were also downed 3-0.

Venezuela struggled to cope with the service of the outstanding Sartoretti from the outset and the defensive wall he put up with middle blocker Luca Tencati. They managed to stay in touch of the Italians for most of the first set until consecutive blocks from Tencati and some powerful hitting from Sartoretti gave them the edge and a one-game lead.

Sartoretti's all-round excellence continued to trouble the Venezuelans throughout the second set, especially his explosive jump serve and net defense with Tencati.

To their credit Venezuela continued to play their aggressive game, with captain Ernardo Gomez and Ivan Marquez enjoying a certain amount of success, but they had no answer to the Italian bombs that were arriving at them from all angles as they went two sets down.

An incredible series of serves from Sartoretti in the final set effectively ended the Venezuelan resistance before the 32-year-old fittingly secured victory with another powerful spike.

Comments:

"I am very happy, I think we played well enough to win. I was nervous before the game because I knew the quality of the Venezuelan players. They are a team we will be talking about a lot in the future, because they are all so young now. But my players went into this game with a good attitude. I'm a very lucky coach."
GIANPAOLO MONTALI
Head coach, Italy

"The Italians are ranked very high in world Volleyball and I also respect Mr. Montali as one of the leading coaches. In the second and third sets I could see our mindset was not as good as it was at the start and we could not control our rhythm. We have very strong teams to play in the first three day of this competition, but I think we can start to wins some games in the next round."
MIGUEL CAMBERO
Head coach, Venezuela

"I was very impressed by the service of Italy's (Andrea) Sartoretti. He has a unique style and must have one of the strongest serves in Volleyball. Today we also made too many unforced errors which we must correct in our later matches. We were up against a very good team but I wish we had been able to compete against them a little more."
ERNARDO GOMEZ
Venezuela captain

Official Result:

Match statistics (P-2) - PDF