Conegliano – Piacenza
However, the Italian championship has always been seen as one of the most competitive in the world. For this reason, and also because of the imminent Olympic Games in Rio, in the last championship many important players decided to come back to Italy, to prepare better for this important event. In this way, the Serie A1 became more competitive and interesting.
If we then refer to the current transfer market, things are going in a similar way. Even if some important and famous players have decided to leave Italy for “richer” countries, like Turkey or China, some other will return. For example, Carolina Costagrande, Katarzyna Skorupa and Robin De Kruijf, who will play in Imoco Volley Conegliano, and Jovana Brakocevic and Neriman Ozsoy, who will join the new team born from the fusion of Liu Jo Modena and Nordmeccanica Piacenza.
Meanwhile, Italy will also welcome young foreign players, who are at their first experience with the professional life of an athlete and wish to improve themselves in a country that has a big tradition in volleyball. These big deals will surely help the Italian championship to become even more and more competitive and spectacular.
At the same time, the transfer market of the Italian teams should also focus on young domestic players. This is because the federation has decided to change some rules from the 2017/2018 championship: in fact, a minimum number of four Italians that always has to be on the court during a match; moreover, the teams cannot play contemporarily with more than one player coming from the same volleyball federation (for example, a team cannot use a setter and an outside hitter both coming from USA).
These rules were made because the Italian federation thinks that there is the need of increasing the level of domestic players in order to have a stronger national team that can compete with the strongest national teams of the world. For example, the young players of Club Italia were in the wish list of many teams that managed to sign some of them, like Anna Danesi and Ofelia Malinov, who will play in Imoco Volley Conegliano, Beatrice Berti and Ilaria Spirito, who are going to Unendo Yamamay Busto Arsizio.
In this way, Italy is experiencing lots of changes in the transfer market, but even if some international and famous players will not take part in the Serie A1 anymore, the show which is one of the best in the entire volleyball world, will surely go on.
Credits: Elena Tonon (editor of Elemercato)
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very well decision. thats why russia is unbeatable in many tournaments because they use more of their local players in their russian league. even young players can match their veteran players and beat other national teams.
First of all nice article. Anyway I’d like to point out that Katarzyna Skorupa will play for Foppapedretti Bergamo next year.
Moreover the new championship rules issued by the Italian Volleyball federation state that in the Serie A1 2017/2018 Clubs will only be able to have TWO players coming from the same federation (NOT ONE) in their roster. This last rule was clearly written to avoid last year situation where Imoco Volley Conegliano had 4 US players (Glass, Robinson, Adams, Easy) – 3 from the NT – and Suedtirol Bolzano had 3 from the Dominican Republic NT (Martinez, Mambru, Rivera)
@Matteo Thank you so much! I should say that Zatarzyna Skorupa was officially signed by Imoco Volley Conegliano one month ago (check the site of the team), and is Skowronska that will play in Foppapedretti Bergamo
Yes sorry I just misread the name! As Elena Tonon wrote it’s Skowronska that will play in Bergamo!
Great decision by the Italian Federation, the reason Russia,Brasil,China and Japan for example are powerhouses is because they focus on its own players, Italy was getting too far behind on that and the bad results the Italian Team was getting was alreday showing that… I think the Men`s league should do the same thing
It looks like that Italian Federation wants to command over SuperLega also. Clubs from SuperLega are payimng their own money and they make the rules. I don’t see why the federations should impose some rules?
I don’t see this as a good decision , either Imoco and Novara already issued interviews they’re not going to play the European Tournaments , they are costly and without some very strong players it would be impossible to win any of them, C’mon look at the Turkish Teams , I mean Sloetijes, Zhu and Hill in one, Larson, Boskovic , KOSHELEVA , Adams , Thaisa in the other , are you kidding? You can’t compete with youngsters not even terrible youngsters like those of Club Italia . However with Conegliano hiring de Cruijff , Folie and Danesi the latter will be likely benched , and we’re talking about someone who’s most likely going to play in the Olympic Games, same thing for Malinov going to be setter B for Conegliano
Almost forgot , such limitation might violate a bunch of EU treaties or maybe laws beginning from the right of any EU worker to be employed freely throughout the EU with no limitations and rules against discrimination for preventing people from work basing this solely for their citizenship. If FIPAV forces the clubs to react legally they might be overruled and imposed no limitation at all, which is what happened to UEFA with the Bosman case.
@Matteo and Elenatonon1
also the setter of Foppapedretti is Eleonora Lo Bianco I seriously doubt they would let her go