Italy start #EuroVolleyM campaign with commanding win in weather-marred historic opening match

Even though the weather conditions provided a series of challenges and some additional (rather unwanted) drama, Thursday night will go down in Volleyball history as Italy started their CEV Enel EuroVolley 2026 Men campaign with a 3-0 victory over Sweden in the historic open-air match played in Piazza del Plebiscito, the real heart of Napoli downtown. This unprecedented show, albeit marred by two breaks due to rainfall, set the tone for a competition that has already broken new ground for European Volleyball. 

Italy vs. Sweden 3-0 (25-22, 25-21, 25-17) 

With Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella in attendance, the start of the match was preceded by a majestic light show and a live performance by renowned band Planet Funk to transform Piazza del Plebiscito into some kind of an open-air disco and Volleyball arena that provided spine-tingling reactions and iconic images that will resonate with people for a very long time. 

However, the Gods were not entirely merciful as rain started pouring down right after the national anthems of Italy and Sweden had been performed live by a military fanfare. The concerns were high as the weather forecasts were not that promising for the remainder of the night and yet after a rather short break, action finally got underway as the players on both sides of the net looked rather cautious while trying to adjust to the conditions. Volleyball is almost always – especially at this elite level – played indoors and even though Italy and Sweden had a couple of sessions to familiarise themselves with this very special venue, the start of the match followed a pretty slow tempo. Italy set the tone with the help of Mattia Bottolo who scored six points in the first set alone and even though Sweden fought back to 18-16, the hosts broke away to 22-18. This is when the action was interrupted for a second time – this time for far longer – due to rainfall. 

There were many concerns as to whether the match could resume and even be completed at all – and yet the speaker very soon announced that the players of both teams were willing to return to the court and to deliver the show that the audience in the stands and following from home truly deserved. The fans never stopped singing along and enjoying themselves and eventually action resumed with Italy closing the first set 25-22 in their favour. 

In a repeat of a memorable 1989 EuroVolley gold medal match, when Italy’s golden era in men’s Volleyball began, Italy and Sweden were playing each other again after many years. Sweden fought hard in the second set and yet Italy always had the advantage, this time with Yuri Romanò and Daniele Lavia as their top scorers (25-21). With everyone still concerned about whether the rain would have stayed away from Napoli downtown at least until the end of the match, Italy looked determined to seize the opportunity to finish the match in straight sets and the Azzurri eventually did so with an even more commanding 25-17 win in the third set to take maximum points from this match before moving to Modena to join the other teams in Pool A – Slovenia, Czechia, Greece, and Slovakia. Romanò (13), middle blocker Giovanni Sanguinetti (12, 90% in attack) and Lavia (11) eventually top scored for Italy. No Swedish player finished the match in double digits.