Italy vs Netherlands Prediction: Expecting Lots of Faults

When the first team and the eighth team meet in the playoffs, it seems that the eighth team has no chance. Well, Italy has their weaknesses, too.

The Italians started the group tournament with the second lineup, but then the real monsters - Michieletto, Lavia, Anzani and even Zaytsev came along and everything started to go well - six wins in a row and first place in the standings.

The Italian men's team has the same problem as the women's - they lose a lot of serves, on average 4.5 per game. If we take only the matches with those who made it into the top eight, there are almost five mistakes per set on average and never less than four.

In four out of five games against playoff participants total of 8.5 aces was broken. It didn't happen only in the opening game.

The Dutch might not have made the playoffs if Argentina had been a little luckier against the United States. But that's just what happened; eighth place in the preliminary tournament, the same number of wins and losses. The Netherlands even fell to Bulgaria, something no one except them and Iran allowed themselves in the group stage.

As for the other teams, the Dutch fell to everyone except Iran, and won a total of one game against the Japanese, Americans, French, Poles and Italians.

Roberto Piazzo's men are losing an average of 4.2 per set. They could miss more, but sometimes Nimir didn't come on the floor or played an incomplete match. He didn't play against the USA so Dutch had nine losses in three sets. Against the other playoff participants the Netherlands averaged 4.8 errors per set.

By the way, without Nimir, the Dutch did not perform a single ace against the USA. In games against the others total of 8.5 aces was always reached.

Bookmakers do not expect four sets in this match, but because of the errors on the serve and aces the TO may happen in three. And vice versa, the total blocks could be the under one in four sets. We shoul remember that two weeks ago these teams played three almost equal sets.

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