In Brazil they want to make Yoandy Leal Brazilian. They want him to wear green and yellow. After the recent debacle in the final of the 2014 World League, now more than ever, the Brazilian Volleyball Confederation (CBV) wants him in their ranks as a banner, as the man charged in his shoulders the weight of the past two years remaining in the Olympic cycle to Rio de Janeiro 2016.
His three exceptional seasons as assistant in the Sada Cruzeiro in the Brazilian league have improved him as a player and have put him in the orbit of the Brazilian national team at the request of DT Bernardinho Rezende. But first he has to obtain the nationality of that country; that paperwork the CBV has begun to make before the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB). On their side they have that Leal, 24, has not played an international match with Cuba since 2010.
The men’s national volleyball team in Brazil no longer intimidates as of yore. It has lost its ability to unnerve opponents with just its presence. There was a recent historical moment that green and yellow jersey worked alone as a method of extortion, so huge, that that was enough for the Brazilians to crash, Mondoflex through, the rest of the planet.
But time has passed and Brazil lost that. Its game has been diluted, it is not as compact as inaccessible, that feeling that the Mikasa would never fall in its territory, or that one out of their hands would be a certain point, has been frozen.
That is the natural end cycle stage labeled in gold, just the same also very recently (by doing some analogies) Barca and Spain in soccer, Federer in tennis and Rossi in MotoGP, had.
For Brazil the end doesn’t come right now with the defeat of the final of the World Championship against the United States, perhaps a couple of years ago when the captain Giba left, when Dante Amaral stopped being the best attacker, and when Murilo Endres decided to take a sabbatical jaded by success.
In Yoandy Leal, Rezende has laid eyes, he has seen in him the star to bring Brazil back in track. A sextet showing lack of potency in attack, neither Wallace nor Vissotto Neves de Souza are attackers who can remove the offensive responsibilities from Murilo Endres and Lucarelli assistants who stand to receive more balls and pass them to the setter than to get up and drive them more beyond the net.
With the Cuban, Brazil would be even more defensive in its back area. Yoandy has raised his reception rates to unimaginable levels, continues that ferocity when raised to attack the net and has achieved mastery.
From the nationalization of Leal, we lose a bit more of that illusion that sometimes invades us seeing several Cuban scattered around the world, that if united in a sextet on Mondoflex, with closed eyes, could be the best team on the planet .
