Italian legend Andrea Giani new coach of reigning Olympic champions
News
Only a week after Bernardo Rezende announced his decision to step down from the role of head coach, the French Volleyball Federation confirmed that Italian Volleyball legend Andrea Giani would be taking over the reins of the reigning Olympic champions. Giani has accepted the challenge of leading ‘Les Bleus’ on the way that takes to a highly anticipated Olympic campaign on home soil at Paris 2024.
Giani has now been coaching for some 15 years, working with leading Italian clubs as well as with the national teams of Slovenia and Germany.
Andrea Giani“It gives me real satisfaction to be the new coach of this world-class team, the reigning Olympic champions, which has the potential to win all the competitions it participates in. In France there is a large pool of high-level players, who only perform in big clubs. I want to prepare them well physically and technically, because the goal will always be to win! I cannot wait to start the season and to live this experience leading us to the Olympic Games in Paris."
New head coach of Team France
After Rezende decided to leave the position for family reasons, the French Volleyball Federation immediately explored a number of options available to secure a high-profile coach for the team that claimed a historic gold medal at the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
“After having been one of the best players in the world, Giani is today one of the very best coaches. We had already taken an interest in his profile when we were looking for a successor to Laurent Tillie. Since he embarked on his coaching career, Giani has become accustomed to work with some of the world’s greatest players, and we are very satisfied that he has accepted the challenge,” says French Volleyball Federation President Eric Tanguy.
At 51 – he will turn 52 on April 22 – Giani is a true legend of our sport. He actually started his career with rowing, the discipline of his father who participated in the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, but eventually switched to Volleyball at the age of 14 to become one of the greatest players in history. His resume speaks for itself: from 1988, the date of the first of his 474 caps with Team Italy (an all-time record to this date), to 2005, he won three Olympic medals (silver in 1996 and 2004, bronze in 2000), three consecutive World Championships (1990, 1994, 1998) titles, four European crowns (1993, 1995, 1999, 2003) and seven World Leagues!
“This very high-level experience and his track record have necessarily been important arguments, Andrea knows what it means to prepare for major international competitions,” adds Axelle Guiguet, National Technical Director of the FFVolley. “We have set high goals for him in terms of performance: making the podium at each of the major competitions, i.e. EuroVolley, Worlds and Olympics.”
Giani will be making his debut at the helm of Team France at the end of the club season and more specifically at the 2022 edition of the Volleyball Nations League from May to July, before the World Championship follows later in the summer.