Italy has become the centre of the volleyball world. The women’s national team has dominated the international rankings for years and, in effect, has won everything there is to win — Olympic gold included. The men’s national team is consistently among the best in every competition. The SuperLega is probably the most competitive league in the world. The best foreign players choose to play in Italy, while Italian coaches and sporting directors have been exporting a model that has produced results for years. Now the men’s European Championship is travelling across Italy, from Naples to Milan via Modena and Turin, arriving in a country that is rediscovering itself as volleyball’s centre of gravity.
“I think Italy really is a point of reference today, for players but not only,” Daniele Lavia tells Undici. “So many players come here because they know they can improve quickly in Italy. It’s not just about the technical level. There are excellent coaches, top facilities, a system that works. And for years our youth national teams have been winning European and World Championships. That doesn’t happen by chance.” At 26, the Trentino Volley and Italy outside hitter is one of the faces of this generation of Azzurri, a generation that in recent years has learned to live with expectations and success, turning a team of young talents into one of the most solid groups in international volleyball.
The results speak for themselves. The SuperLega continues to attract the best players in world volleyball, while the national team keeps renewing itself without losing its competitiveness. For Lavia, that continuity is the clearest sign of the health of the game in Italy: “When you look at the results, you understand there’s continuity. It’s not one generation that wins and then disappears. There are other young players coming through behind us. To me, that’s the most important sign.”
The story of this national team is also, in the end, the story of a group that grew up together. Many of the players in Ferdinando De Giorgi’s cycle have known each other since the youth teams, sharing tournaments, trips, defeats and victories long before they found themselves together at the highest level. “In 2021 we were kids,” Lavia says. “Now we have more experience. We understand what it means to go all the way in a competition, to play decisive matches, to deal with pressure. We’ve had a taste of winning and we want to keep tasting it.” The technical growth has been obvious, but the mental side perhaps even more so. “We’ve won a lot and we want to keep winning. Once you experience certain emotions, you don’t want to stop. When we lose, it gets to us. When we win, we celebrate as if it were the first time. There’s no getting used to it. If anything, maybe the hunger gets stronger,” Lavia says.
The idea comes up often in his words. Winning is not an end point, but perhaps not a springboard either. It is more a responsibility, the weight of the crown (see Henry IV, Part 2, William Shakespeare). “Fefè took us on when we were kids,” Lavia says of De Giorgi. “He guided us through a process of growth that wasn’t only about volleyball. Today we are different players and also different people.” In August 2025, during a weight-training session with the national team, an apparently minor accident changed the course of Lavia’s season. The full extent only became clear afterwards, but the consequences of the injury were devastating: compound open fractures of the fourth and fifth fingers, tendon damage, two operations and five months away from the court. “At first I didn’t feel too much pain. Before I saw my hand, I was hoping it wasn’t anything serious. Then I saw the cut. There was a lot of blood. I turned to the doctor and the physio and that’s when I understood it was something serious.” The realisation came a moment later. “The first thing I said was: the World Championship is gone.”
Difficult weeks followed as Lavia went through rehabilitation, appointments and uncertainty. “You have to accept it, because if you don’t, it becomes a mess. You think about it constantly and slow down the healing process. You have to let positivity take over as soon as possible. It’s the basis of everything,” he says, looking back. “With an injury this complex, I knew getting back into the game could be difficult. Until they told me I would definitely return, I was very worried.” Then came the sentence that changed everything. “The words that helped me most were those of the doctor. He told me: ‘We’ve done an incredible job, you’ll be back playing.’ From there, I started looking ahead.”
The next World Championship, though, was impossible to ignore. While Italy went on to win the title, Lavia had to follow everything from a distance. “The days of the World Championship were the hardest. Not being able to share that experience with my teammates was a huge weight. But it made me understand a lot of things.” Above all, he says, the value of the group they had built over the years: “My teammates kept messaging me. I sent them photos of my hand, the wound, the progress. They were close to me through every stage of the rehabilitation.” In the end, Italy won the World Championship. His shirt was there on the podium too. Simone Giannelli mentioned him during the celebrations, and watching on television, Lavia struggled to hold back his emotions. “When Simone spoke about me in front of the cameras, and when they brought my shirt onto the podium, it was difficult not to cry.”
This is where the deeper nature of volleyball as a team sport comes through: there is technique, physicality and talent, but the game remains inevitably collective. “A team sport gives you someone to lean on in difficult moments. If I don’t perform, I know there’s someone else who can help me. And I want the others to feel the same way about me.”
The same applies to the technical side of the game. “Volleyball is a very complicated sport,” Lavia says. “You need technique, power, physical ability. But above all, you need feeling with your teammates. The real difficulty is putting six people together at the same time, each with their own character, their own way of experiencing matches and training.” Perhaps this is where the key to Italy’s success lies. More than talent or the quality of the league, what makes the difference is the ability to turn a group of individuals into something shared.