Italy move on after ruthless win over Germany

The world’s number one team Italy emerged as the third squad with a booked spot in the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship quarterfinals in Thailand. In Saturday’s opening game in Bangkok, they hammered out a merciless eighthfinal shutout of Germany and advanced to the last eight of the tournament. Italy’s quarterfinal opponent will be known later on Saturday and it will be the winner of the fourth eighthfinal match between Poland and Belgium, serving off at 20:30 local time (13:30 UTC).

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In the three sets of the match, star opposite Paola Egonu produced a match-high 21 points towards Italy’s 3-0 (25-22, 25-18, 25-11) sweep of the game against fellow Europeans Germany.

Egonu delivered a third of the team’s 48 points in attack, four of the team’s nine kill blocks and one of the team’s two aces to top the charts of the match. 21-year-old outside hitter Stella Nervini contributed another 11 points, including a kill block, while middle blocker Sarah Fahr put away an ace and finished with a total of 10 points. She nailed the other nine points in attack, including the match winner with a pulverizing first-tempo swing, at an impressive success rate of 82%.

It was Italy’s 33^rd consecutive victory in official matches, a streak that started back in June 2024 and led the team to the Olympic title at Paris 2024 and two Volleyball Nations League trophies in a row.

“We don’t think about that. Wins in a row are not our goal. The goal is to do our best and win the game,” Italy’s outside Myriam Sylla, who chipped in with eight points in offense, told VBTV after the match. “We knew that Germany would be tough to beat. We played against them in VNL and we won by 3-2. So, we knew that they would start pushing from the start and we were focused. It wasn’t easy. It was a little bit difficult, but altogether we made it. All of us on the court and outside the court, we are together and we go in the same direction. So, if anything is difficult, we stay together and we are ready for everything.”

With 30 successful swings, five kill blocks and no aces, Germany were behind their opponents in all scoring elements. They only matched Italy in the number of unforced errors with 16 each. Outside hitter Lina Alsmeier was the team’s only player to reach the double digits in scoring with 10 points, all in attack.

“Of course, it’s tough right now, because I think we all imagined it a little bit different from losing in three straight sets,” Alsmeier commented. “We wanted to show a little bit of a bigger fight, like we already showed against Poland that we were able to play a high level of volleyball. Also, we must say that Italy played so well and made it difficult for us. It is a little sad that we are now out of the tournament. But this is the first year of the new Olympic cycle and we already made a big step forward with the whole team. We have a lot of young players and this summer we really tried to build something new, and I think we already showed it in this tournament. For the next years, step by step, we will grow up and come back stronger.”

2025 FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship: full schedule and results

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