Verona - Modena

SuperLega, Round 20

A match anything but a foregone conclusion

On Sunday, February 19th, Verona will face one of the strongest teams in the Superlega, Modena.

In the last few matches, we have seen Verona in great form, even beating teams of the caliber of Lube at home, showing great strength within their own walls. On the other side of the net, we have Modena, who also expresses their best game at home, with some difficulty when playing against an opposing audience.

Overall, the statistics of the two teams are quite similar, with a slight difference in favor of Verona in attack. As for the rest of the fundamentals, the two teams are very similar.

The reason why I see Modena as slightly favored is the fact that in the last few matches, despite the favorable results, Verona has excellent percentages but lacks efficiency, with a high number of errors and blocked balls in attack, especially from their star player Keita. In the last match, after some up-and-down sets as an opposite, he returned to playing as an outside hitter, and coach Stoycev deployed the Russian giant Sapozhkov as opposite with chilling percentages (82% with only one blocked ball), bringing the fifth set against a Padova team that did not give up for a second throughout the match.

I see Modena with that extra experience, with those players who make a real difference in critical moments like multiple champions Bruninho and Ngapeth, and that's why I see them victorious this Sunday. In addition, the standings are clear: Modena has 38 points compared to Verona's 29.

Surely it will not be an easy match for either of the two teams, so I do not think we will see less than 4 sets.