Some games do not belong only to the scoreboard, the numbers, the sets won or lost. Some remain as figures in collective memory, because they tell much more than what happens on a field. The world final won by Italy against Bulgaria is one of these. It was not only a clear victory – three sets out of four masters with the naturalness of those who have full awareness of their strength – but an affirmation of style, identity, belonging. From the first ball Italy has imposed its rhythm, like an orchestra that agrees the tools and then does not miss a note. Bulgaria tried to resist, to force, to snatch points with pride. But the impression was clear: there was no room for a reversal.

A silent coach

The blues have held the field with the calm of those who know that time, and with it the result, is on their side. At the center of this story is Fefè De Giorgi, a silent coach, almost invisible. He does not raise his voice, he doesn’t look for the camera. Yet his imprint is everywhere. It has shaped a group that lives of the oldest and most modern principle of sport: shared responsibility. “With talent we win the games, but it is with teamwork and the intelligence that the championships are won,” said Michael Jordan: De Giorgi knows it, and for this his Italy is a team before the sum of individuals. De Giorgi comes from the tradition that had his prophet in Julio Velasco. Velasco who taught that there are no phenomena and supporting actors, but only roles that are completed. De Giorgi took that lesson and made it even more sober, more adherent to the character of this generation: less proclamations, more substance.

Giannelli the symbol

And then there is him, the symbol: Simone Giannelli. Plentant, captain, silent poet. His raised are like perfect, calibrated phrases, in which rhythm and surprise coexist. Giannelli guided his companions with a lucidity that has something natural: never forcing, reading the field with the eye of those who see a second forward. It is the metronome, but also the inventor: its balls are rational and yet capable of unhingeing logic. In this final, more than anything else, Giannelli seemed to embody a part of the country: young, intelligent, sober and, at the same time, able to amaze. Around him, the chorus: Michieletto with his power and his cheekiness, constant and lucid bottot, incisive Roman in the decisive moments. And then the plants, which made the wall an aesthetic as well as technical gesture, and the defense, which did not drop a ball without fighting. Each role, every function, has found its place in a geometry that has never creaked. Bulgaria, a proud team, tried to resist. But he was trapped in the Italian design. When an opponent clearly loses risk is frustration, even humiliation. Instead no: under the net, at the end of the match, there has been room for a fair play gesture that will remain more than the score in the eyes. A look, a hug, a caress. As if the victory, to be true, should also include the other, do not delete it. In that instant, Italy showed not only the technical force but also the moral force: to win without trampling.

Dominate without screaming

Today Italian volleyball is this: the ability to dominate without screaming, of being great without giant on others. It is the reverse of Italian football, often deformed mirror of individualisms and scandals. Here there is an invisible discipline, made of hours of work in provincial gyms, of coaches who do not appear, of boys who become men in silence. Italo Calvino wrote: “Taking life lightly is not superficiality, but gliding on things from above.” The Italy of volleyball Plana like this: light and precise, without the weight of rhetoric, with the grace of those who have worked so much and no longer need to prove it in words. And how can we forget, at this moment, the women: the women’s national team of Julio Velasco, who collected the same inheritance and transformed it in the future. It is rare, in Italian sport, to see male and feminine march parallel with equal dignity and strength. In volleyball it happens, and it is perhaps the most political lesson of all: the merit does not know gender hierarchies. Also for this reason the victory over Bulgaria was not only a won final.

It was a declaration of identity: Italy who knows how to be together, who does not confuse the opponent with the enemy, who recognizes in common work the true form of size. A game that looks like a choral novel: protagonist not a single, but a country that, for once, has recognized itself in a group that works. As Pasolini del Calcio wrote: “It is the last sacred representation of our time”. But this time, the sacredness has gone from another field: from the fair play under the net to Giannelli’s ‘direction’, to De Giorgi’s smiles. A sacredness that speaks of pietas and harmony. And perhaps this is the real victory: to have shown the world that Italy can be great not only when it wins, but above all for how it wins.