Italy vs Slovenia Prediction: Klemen Čebulj Remembers His Last Year Failure

The Slovenian team is getting older. Pajenk is 36 years old, Vincic is 35, Urnaut is 34. They had plenty of opportunities to win something, but the fate was different - a lot of silver and not a single gold piece. Oh, fortune, maybe now you'll turn your face to the Slovenians. After all, a bomb doesn't hit the same Katowice twice.

The national volleyball team defeated the Olympic champions from France in the previous game. Surprisingly, the Italians were stronger than the French in aces - 6:4. However, the total of aces under 10.5 worked out.

Besides, De Giorgi's wards beat their opponents by blocks 10:7 and made fewer mistakes by serve - 26:29.

In this quarterfinal, we did not like Micheletto - he scored 12 out of 32, put one block, got one ice and four losses, and gave the French three points on offense. It's good that at least Alessandro had a decent serve. But without Ngapeth, who gave Italians 19 points (!), it would be even more challenging to get to the semifinals.

The Slovenians were expectedly bogged down with Ukraine. They lost in blocks 7:9 and aces 4:7. But they had only 14 serve losses compared to Ukraine's 20.

By the way, it was only the second match in which Cretu's wards were worse than their opponents on the block - before that, they fell to Cameroon by 7:6. The team defeated the block both Germany (twice) and France by one to eight points. Well, there's the possibility of loss for the third time.

The Italians don't have elders in the lineup, so they play effectively on the block. They won all their opponents by points on the block: 14:4, 7:5, 7:1, 12:5, and 10:7. 

There's another exciting option: Klemen Čebulj averages four and a half points per game - he's Slovenia's top scorer. Daniele Lavia, for his part, is one of Italy's highest scorers, but he averages 3.8 points per set. So there is a suggestion on Chebul's total over 16.5, which can theoretically be reached in four sets.

So Cebulj needs to do a little better than he did in last year's final, that is, a little better than terrible, to reach the individual total of 16.5. He could even do it in four sets.

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