Paris 2024, Julio's dream and a medal lunch

Paris - Appointment Sunday, 1 p.m., with one Italy lying under the beach umbrella (assuming it is open, given the current times....) and another on the court, in Paris, in Hall 1 of the Arena Sud. Red circles have already been made on the agenda, because it will be the moment of truth for the Azzurri of Italvolley, and for its helmsman Julio Velasco. To tell the truth, this team has already expressed its truth, and paradoxically, it will not be the much-dreamed-of gold medal or the silver medal already won that will change the meaning of the journey and the final judgement. Velasco's team is an Italy that has rediscovered its smile, to which it has also added the tiger's eyes, as the Olympic tournament has shown, with only one set lost (in the opener, against the Dominican Republic) and up to the success in the semifinals against Turkey, coming back in all three sets then won. Obviously, the presence on the bench of the Great Leader (supported by a staff that includes the Player of the Century Lorenzo Bernardi and a fine connoisseur of women's volleyball such as Massimo Barbolini, who will soon be coaching in the newly formed US professional league) played a decisive role in bringing back on the right track a group that had come close to reaching the sky under Mazzanti's management, before sinking amid quarrels and misunderstandings.

'Here and now': these are the watchwords that the girls and Julio repeat to each other; because now the past does not exist, must not exist, even if it remains, returns, resurfaces. Who knows how Julio will do in these days that separate him from 1 p.m. on Sunday, 11 August 2024, not to think of that other final, the one that so many of us still have stuck in our eyes and hearts, in Atlanta '96, with the Netherlands that snatched the golden dream of the Italian Generation of Phenomena.

He clings to his moral and philosophical imperatives, Velasco, but at the same time, if you talk to him a couple of steps away, you first see the man than the guru, with his normality and fallibility, or rather finitude. Which is no bad thing, given that in the 1990s he was tasked (we turned him) into a guru and preacher, only to then fail to follow his precepts and indications, according to canonical Italic custom. And so, just a step away from an appointment that, as he would say and indeed has already told us, will change careers at most, but not destinies and lives, it is good to know that some time ago the coach had already booked three flats here in Paris for his daughters, grandchildren and various relatives, from the quarter-finals onwards of the Olympic tournament. As if to say that without knowing the final verdict, Julio already knew where his girls would take him. That is, here and now, on a Parisian Sunday that, come what may, no one will ever forget.