Padova to entertain Milano on Sunday
The SuperLega Credem Banca is widely recognised as the best men’s domestic league in the world and features many of the leading players in international volleyball. These players have a huge impact on the outcome of the Italian League and this week we focus on two of the biggest Japanese national team stars – Yuki Ishikawa and Ran Takahashi – who will be up against each other when their Italian club teams lock horns in Padua on Sunday.
Takahashi’s Pallavolo Padova will entertain Ishikawa’s Allianz Milano in a seventh-leg fixture at the Kioene Arena on November 13, starting at 15:30 local time (14:30 UTC).
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Thanks to players like outside hitters Yuki Ishikawa and Ran Takahashi, the men’s national team of Japan is undergoing a period of revival. Japan have not medalled at a major world-level competition since their 2009 FIVB Volleyball World Grand Champions Cup bronze, but they have definitely started growing out of the underdog status they had at such competitions over the last decade, swinging in the opposite direction, towards the team’s glory years of the 1960s and the 1970s, and certainly becoming a squad to look out for.
Japan’s ‘fab three’ Takahashi, Ishikawa and Nishida at the FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship 2022
Ishikawa, the most experienced of the ‘fab three’, which also includes opposite Yuji Nishida, will turn 27 next month. The current captain of Japan has been a member of the national team since he was 18. He joined the senior team while still going through the various age-category national selections for his country and claimed his first medal, an Asian Games 2014 silver.
It was around that time when he started his first season as a professional player in Italy, becoming the first Japanese athlete to compete in the SuperLega. As a member of Modena Volley, he lifted the 2015 Coppa Italia and earned a SuperLega silver. During that season, he also returned to Japan to play for his academic team and excelled at the All-Japan Intercollegiate Championship by leading Chuo University to the title and earning the Most Valuable Player award. Ishikawa and his college teammates also won the next two editions of the competition.
The 1.91m-tall outside returned to Italy for the 2016-2017 season as a Top Volley Latina player. His club career also took him to Emma Villas Siena and Kioene Padova, before he joined Allianz…
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