GIULIO AND HIS VOLLEY*

‘”Where are you rushing so fast”  - my mother asked once in an afternoon in 1987:
“just heading home to change me as in that gym they play volleyball…” – I replied
I have never gone out of that pitch since 1987…
Since that very day, my life has been full of days, months and years with a ball and a net: mornings at school, afternoons on the road, nights under the light of the lamps with a ball in the hand and a net to beat.
Whilst Italvolley was winning everywhere they go, I destroy tens of video-recorders (with great joy of my father) by watching and watching again and memorizing all the actions of those champions. The more the time goes by, the more I realize I remember every single move done by those athletes I see in the videos, in the academy, on the road…I just got addicted of those visual frame: the more I watch the more I need.
It’s 1989 and thanks to a friend I manage to have an audition for an important team; the coach is silent and meditative, and very smart too; he inspected me from a far, said few things and, at the end, he told me I can join the team if I want to: Vittorio Sacripanti simply but definitely has allowed my passion to come out and grow up to top levels. Both on the pitch and outside his wife Camilla and him cuddle me as the one who needs to learn the ropes and fly away as the little kid of a team done by champions like Giorgio Pallotta, Giulio Magnani, Niccolò Cultrera...
And in fact, after two seasons in which I fill the pitch, I manage to get a proposal to play outside Rome.
The beginning of my indoor – going around Italy in 1991 – is something that will teach me what youngsters feel and live far from your house, your friends, etc; I understood that working far from your beloved ones is not easy, even if you are paid to do it.
Mondovì  Piemontese, Cosenza, Genzano, Latina, it’s all around Italy looking for incentives of the fairest, most trustworthy and nicest people.
My career changes in September 1995: after the nth audition in Novara, I decide to go to Bottega of Colbordolo, Pesaro. I arrive on a bus in an empty square on the hills of Pesaro. The travel is long and uncomfortable, my knee does not like that, I’m nervous and thirsty as well; I want to go back, back to home, start working with my father. But when I drop off the bus, I bump in a black and long beard man, the kindest of all the Santa Claus. That man will get the cornerstone of my life. That fair, kind and gifted man is Giuseppe  Uguccioni and many athletes know him for his fairness as well…over the years, he will push me to keep on behaving like the guy who dropped off that bus carrying only a suitcase full of dreams.

In 1996, the season is successful under the guide of the first modern and stakhanoviste coach of my career: Daniele “Pido” Rovinelli shows me how the Volley is done by trajectories, numbers, systematic work; but even by passion, rage, sleepless nights to prepare the tactics to win the next match.
At the end of that fantastic tournament, I fly back to Rome for a refresher course for indoor trainers, in which they explain tons of exercises: I recap them, ‘She’ simply copies them..
The choice of inviting her to the seaside after the course simply has given me the best and most incredible palette I can gain the most rare colours from by which I draw Our love. Thanks, my ‘Light’.
Three days after that encounter, I plan to have my operation at the knee to solve that tendinopathy that has bothered me from a while; the operation is fine, the rehabilitation is not.
After two months, thy told me they need to re-open again my knee as they forgot a tip out of there…exactly like this: a tip of a drill will force me to skip the entire 96-97 season.
They are never-ending months of inactivity.
The recovery is slow and I have spot jobs I do within long sessions of 1000 therapies and full days in the gym.
In summer 1997, it can be back to the Volley Giulio Mosci, the serious, the accurate, the one who believes reaching A series is the most important thing in the world; that Giulio starts a growth path with Sandro Cordovana, that will lead them to get the pass for Italian National team in 1999.
I go around the world and I see what happens in the World Tour, between Acapulco, Toronto, Berlin and many others I can realize this can be sometimes a bit different but at the end of the day it is all about Volley. I promise will bring there my ideas about how to play, which already work so well in Italy.
In this way it start a endless list of notes about unknown foreign players and the meaningless detail of their games; those notes I always carry with me will be what I care and help me most in the following years
After 6 years…my way of playing will be successful even internationally.

In 2000, I manage to join A2 series, in Gioia del Colle and the following year in Vibo Valentia…but but this is not how I figured this out… Among scent-less and cold flats, and sometimes even without a bed…I prefer to be back in B1 in a sun town as Corigliano Calabro, where I’m able to get the scent of mandarin oranges, the sound of the sea and those beautiful people I still carry in my heart.

In 2004 we bring the team up to A2, but for me it is time to turn the page and hope in something more who knows where, up to the proposal of become Assistant Coach of Italian Beach Volley team (male and female) with a special responsibility to select and train the male young.

In January 2005, I decide to second my mind: at the end of the day, for many years I have trained young players playing with me, tactically and technically and I accept the Beijing 2008 project. A new completely different world is going to begin, different dreams, different projects, different confidence.

The wage is low, the work of only 2 coaches and 6 teams is simply endless, but it is my passion, my destiny and I have even Donatella who backs me.
Our athletes improve their international ranking up to become powerful world players: with their talent and our sessions they arrive beyond our brightest expectation; I teach what learnt on 1000 outskirt pitches, in dark academies, on the roman sand, what is needed for Italy to play at world levels.
At the end of 2006, all our 3 male teams are in the main board of the World Tour and our young teams are ranked as second and third worldwide.

In April 2007, after the countless stage in Rio de Janeiro, I was proposed to stay home with a granted wage but without coaching anyone.
The reason behind this is ‘incompatibility’ with the responsible of the Olympics project…as a matter of fact, this prevents me and two other athletes from trying to qualify for the Olympics game of the following year.
The dedication live on the RAI (Italian National Broadcaster) done by 2007 Italian Champions pushes me to restart again.
After the honeymoon with the girl who copied at the refresher course, me and my determined spouse run by ourselves and in 2008 at the Final Master in Jesolo my teams are the best (1° - 3° e 5° place).
The title in 2008 fulfil a beautiful dream as Head Coach and shows how the path of this new Volley* is marked: my athletes play a system done by side out and break phase built around solutions I consider innovative, and above all successful. Athletes as Zaytsev (19 years old), Domenghini, Fenili prove my Volley* works even on the beach.

In 2009, I really manage a team done by exceptional athletes, nothing to envy to the National team: Domenghini-Zaytsev play again a final with the very strong Nicolai-Varnier, and the photo here shows how they really were head-to-head even though with means and fire-power very different.

The female team close the season by qualifying in the World stage in Polony where Carolina Costagrande proves to be the strongest Volley* player on Earth and Valeria Rosso will in one year play her first world stage final with the more then gifted Marta Menegatti.
2010, still few money, few tournament we can join but the Italian ranking still sees a team of mine stand out: Tomatis in that very year proves to be the most continuous defender in Italy; but the real revelation for the least attentive is Alex Ranghieri, who was recommended to me few years before by my friend Alessio Corsetti and immediately plays same as the strongest all the summer long. More over, in that season, I play two finals in which the two opponents are both coached by me…and when on the TV screen you see the coach seated alternatively on both the benches (Domenghini, then Ranghieri, then back to Casadei and Colaberardino)...by chance another federal paper is ready to prohibited this case with a single man coaching two finalists.

A settembre del 2010 nasce Sofia (Meraviglia), la nostra principessa...e mentre sui campi continuo ad allenare, continua anche la mia ricerca di un posto dove poter far crescere i campioni di domani.
In september 2010 Sofia, our princess and marvel, is born and while I keep on coaching, I still look for the right place where to grow the champions of tomorrow. In summer 2011, ‘my’ Laura Cavalluzzi is defeated in a final which looks like a victory: a badly started season, adjusted in the last two tournaments thanks to two wonderful professionals like Margherita Chiavaro and her coach James Martins; a final gained after hours, weeks, years spent to let Laura grow: Laura the out-of-ranking, Laura the absent-minded, Laura the determine, Laura the 2011 Italian vice-champion.

The 2012 season will always be the one signed by the arrival of our Prince, Igor Andrea, who any way enjoy kidding with my athletes forcing me to be back early or not to leave…then between Saturday and Sunday of the tournament in Ostia, thanks to my super Wife I was able to go to…my second born decides it time for him to let people know him.

Coaching professionals and coaching amateurs which I use to call professionals all the same is not that different: it is very important to grow ‘a child who dreams to become someone’ (Ivan Zaytsev), but it is the same to teach to value the sport to someone who does something different to make ends meet.
Behind my sun glasses…I really thank my travel buddies (good and bad) who have allowed me to enjoy this profession-passion I use to call Volley*: I hope to give you something more every month by this site.

See you soon Giulio Mosci

*(beach and indoor are for me two sides of the same sport)