Ice Hockeyworld championships 2021
FISG
The squad of the national team for the world championship, starting on 21 May in Latvia. The Blue Team had to upset the roster.
Sunday 16 May 2021 7 minutes reading time
Honoring the blue jersey, fully respecting the values of sport, giving young and very young children the opportunity to compete with the best of world ice hockey. Here are the goals of Italy which will start this Sunday from Verona to Riga, where the Top Division World Cup will begin on 21 May.
It will be a Blue Team decimated by absences on the track and also on the bench, the one that will board the flight to Latvia. A team hit hard by injuries and, above all, by Covid-19. Despite constant checks and strict compliance with safety protocols, in fact, the virus wedged itself into the blue group, infecting (fortunately without serious symptoms) many of the key players of the team and also the coach. In total, there were 15 positive cases, two of which returned thanks to the passing of the disease certified by a negative PCR test. Compared to the original calls, the following players were cut for technical choice: Simone Dadiè, Leonardo Felicetti, Enrico Larcher and Gianluca March. The list of players currently positive at Covid-19 is quite long, and is divided between those who certainly will not be able to participate in the World Cup, and those who could instead join the team once they are negative.
Among the first are goalkeeper Andreas Bernard and forwards Tommaso Traversa, Michele Marchetti and Matthias Mantinger, who were not included in the list of 28 sent to the IIHF. Other players currently positive at Covid-19 could instead join the roster during the tournament: goalkeeper Jake Smith, defenders Thomas Larkin, Enrico Miglioranzi, Alex Trivellato and striker Markus Gander.
In the same situation are head coach Greg Ireland and one of his assistants, Riku-Petteri Lehtonen. Ireland will continue to play, as far as possible, its role as remote head coach, for the start of the world adventure the team will be led on the bench by Giorgio De Bettin, Fabio Armani and the goalkeepers coach , the Swedish Peter Andersson. All those who left for Latvia have been vaccinated in recent days against Covid-19, and the ice hockey national team is therefore among the very first sports representatives in our country to receive a dose of the vaccine.
Several players had to miss the World Cup due to injury including Diego Kostner, Giovanni Morini, Marco Insam, Joachim Ramoser, Domenic Alberga, Ivan Tauferer and Luca Zanatta. “We are undoubtedly in a complicated situation - comments the president of the FISG, Andrea Gios - and many might think it would have been easier to raise the white flag. However, we want to fully honor what we earned on the pitch in 2019 in Bratislava: we owe it to our sport, we owe it to the blue jersey, we owe it to the IIHF that organized these World Championships despite the pandemic.
The absences force us to anticipate by a few years the inclusion of a series of young people on whom we are aiming for the 2026 Olympics: for them it is a great opportunity, and we expect everyone to give their best not to disfigure against teams objectively anymore. equipped. The Federation has confidence in the boys, the coaches and the staff: I hope that, even from a distance, the Italian fans will show their affection for this group ”.
After the PCR tests carried out on Friday finally gave all negative results, in the late afternoon yesterday the team was finally able to get back on track for the first training session after more than a week of isolation. An isolation that, moreover, will also continue in Riga: arrived in Latvia, in fact, Italy will enter together with all the other national teams in a "bubble" from which it will only be able to exit two days later to finally test the ice of Arena Riga. The World Cup debut is scheduled for Friday 21 May at 4.15 pm (3.15 pm in Italy) against Germany.
Subsequently the Blue Team will face Norway, Latvia, Finland, Kazakhstan, Canada and the United States. The presence in the blue roster of 9 boys under 24 born from 1997 onwards should be noted. Fun fact: the youngest player is just 16 years old. This is the goalkeeper Damian Clara, born in 2005.
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