After 24 years of waiting, the Italian Men’s National Team is again World Champion; to celebrate the great result obtained by the Azzurri on Sunday evening in Katowice there are many fans of this sport but also an entire youth sector: that of Trentino Volley which provided the squad led on the bench by Ferdinando De Giorgi three athletes of the starting sextet .
The setter Simone Giannelli, the middle blocker Gianluca Galassi and the spiker Alessandro Michieletto, absolute protagonists of the event, have in fact grown up wearing the yellow-blue jersey, which they started wearing since they were just over thirteen.
Simone Giannelli arrived in 2010 in the club’s youth team, where he remained until May 2021, winning any youth title, any individual award and wearing the first team jersey 315 times, during which he won two championships, a World Cup for Clubs and a CEV Cup. During this World Cup he also covered the role of captain of the national team, a task that he began to perform in Trento in 2018, subsequently totaling 130 games with the armband.
Gianluca Galassi, now middle blocker of Vero Volley Monza, was part of the Trentino Volley youth teams from September 2012 until the summer of 2015, winning five Italian titles: an Under 17 championship ( 2013), two Junior Leagues (2014 and 2015) and two Under 19 Scudetti (2014, from mvp, and 2015). In his last season with the Gialloblù (2014/15) on a couple of occasions he also wore the shirt of the then Energy T.I. Diatec Trentino (with whom he often trained while competing in Serie B1 under the orders of Francesco Conci), without ever actually making his debut in the SuperLega. His debut in the national top flight came two years later with Revivre Milano, a club to which Trentino Volley lent him after his experience with Club Italia.
For Alessandro Michieletto, however, the climb was even faster; in fact, it took him only four years to collect his first presence in the first team (dated 13 February 2019 – home success in three sets against Amriswil with the attached last point of the match), having arrived in the yellow-blue nursery in September 2015, not yet fourteen. Today is the fourth great victory in the blue jersey; he had obtained the first in summer 2019, again (Under 19 World Cup), but in his palmares there are also European Seniors 2021 and Under 21 World Cup.
