IT wasn’t a bittersweet win by any means for Alas Pilipinas head coach Angiolino Frigoni after taking down his former team Egypt in the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship.
In fact, the 71-year-old Italian mentor has no feelings of remorse whatsoever in beating the last seniors’ national team he led to great success before moving to the Philippines.
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"It was 10 years ago. Now, I am the coach of the Philippines. I don’t feel sorry for them,” Frigoni said.
“I wanted to beat them and we did. Sorry.”
Frigoni will always be remembered by the Pharaohs as the coach that completed Egypt’s unprecedented eight-peat in the 2015 Men's African Volleyball Championship.
In the gold medal game that year, Egypt took down its longstanding African rival Tunisia that it will take on next for a spot in the FIVB Worlds Round of 16.
Against a proven winner in the international stage, Frigoni believes Alas Pilipinas put up a textbook performance in its 29-27, 23-25, 25-21, 25-21 win that was enough to cut giants like Egypt down to size.
“What I expected is to play this kind of volleyball. When you play this kind of volleyball, for all the opponents, it’ll be difficult to play against us, maybe not the first team in the world,” Frigoni said.
“A win is a different story. The difference is you have to wait if the other team will let you win. What Egypt did today was play good, but we played better than them for the win.
“There’s no playing bad or good. In volleyball, when you play one against one, it’s playing better against the other or play worst than the other.”
For a serial winner like him, where would such a victory against a team he knows like the palm of his hand rank?
“The last win is always the best,” he said.
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