SIENA. Siena returned this afternoon to work at PalaEstra in view of the next home match. The appointment is very close, given that on Wednesday 19 January at 7 pm the biancoblu will face in the Santa Croce house.

The Tuscan derby is the recovery of the thirteenth day of the first round, a match that was to be played last December 26 but which was not due to the Coronavirus positivity of over three Pisan team athletes.

Santa Croce, in a ranking that is in any case “lame” due to the many games postponed due to Covid, is currently eighth in the ranking with 20 points, which are the result of a journey made up so far of five wins and seven defeats. The red and white lost the last match played at home, against Brescia (2-3). Siena, on the other hand, is currently eleventh with 13 points, with four wins and nine defeats in the thirteen matches played.

The presale to watch the race started online on the CiaoTickets channels. The PalaEstra box office will be open on Wednesday, the day of the match, from 10 to 12 and from 16.30 onwards.

Coach Montagnani talks about the match against Santa Croce: “It seems to me that at this moment in the championship we have taken a sharp step backwards together. The teams are not complete, they have lost pace and a lot of work has therefore been reset. We lived through two tough weeks, first with Mattei’s Covid positive and then with those of Pinelli and Agrusti. It is a time when we are put to the test further. We have trained with a few players and with only one central. I have never complained, but it is obvious that we are in trouble. Against Bergamo in some moments we did well, keeping their pace. In the first set, there were two or three episodes that we could handle a lot better. Bergamo plays constantly throughout the set, at the beginning and at the end, and from 20 onwards they make very few mistakes. In the third set we have a lot, and which I believe is the result of our current insecurities. In the first two sets we also did good things. Too bad, because in the second set we did not manage to gain the advantage we gained, without making the most of the ball change phase with our reception and so we gave our opponents the opportunity to return. We also had balls to break but we didn’t succeed ”.

Finally, the opinion of the Siena coach on the match against Santa Croce: “He was lucky, like other teams, to take Covid with the entire team group at the same time. Then, once they recovered, they were back in operation all together and were able to get back on the road at 100%. We, on the other hand, have been hit in dribs and drabs and this creates problems in the continuity of work. For some things Santa Croce is even stronger than Bergamo, but in the last challenge they found Brescia and the quality of some players of the Lombard team made the difference. It will be a tough match for us, it is under derby, and sometimes derbies are a little bit unpredictable “.