ETTORE Guidetti has seen the best and worst the sport has to offer in the 20 club and national teams he’s coached over the last two decades.
Nxled, being one of them, gave him a troubling start to his first stint in Philippine volleyball following an 0-8 start to the 2024-25 PVL All-Filipino Conference.
Tough as the early goings of his PVL run might have been so far, the 50-year-old Italian coach isn’t about to panic just yet especially after finally getting his first win at Galeries Tower's expense.
READ: EJ Laure leads NXLED to first PVL All-Filipino win
“The fact that I am still here after a bunch of losses says that I am feeling very good about the team. They are really nice to coach and a very coachable team. I am having, every single day, a nice day staying with them,” said Guidetti.
“(I’m trying) to help them in any way I can because I have 16 very nice human beings and it’s part of my work to use all what I can to help them to develop.”
Decades of successes and losses at the highest level of European volleyball equipped him with the patience to move forward through skids and heartbreaks.
Guidetti shared with SPIN.ph how he continues to draw strength and inspiration from one of the game’s most renowned figures, both as a player, coach and official — Doug Beal.
Beal, 77, was a former CEO of USA Volleyball with over 200 international caps to his name. He is also regarded as one of the greatest players-turned-coaches to have represented the stars and stripes in the world stage.
“I think that the situation that really kind of summarizes everything (with Nxled now) is coach Doug Beal," he said.
“He was the coach of the Generation of the Miracles in 1984 in the States, and he said that a very good coach is a coach that has won a lot and lost a lot because you have the possibility to manage all the situations.”
Having coached USA’s Generation of Miracles, one of Beal’s adages on winning and losing in volleyball became Guidetti’s guiding light as a coach himself over his 20-year career.
“Those (wins and losses) have been part of my career. I am very lucky to have a lot of winnings. I am very proud also to have a lot of losses, because it increases my experience.
“If you're only expecting to win, honestly, most of the time, it's not really depending on the coach. 80 percent of the time, it's about the team. If you get to make the team better every day, probably you're one of the best coaches.”
Get more of the latest sports news & updates on SPIN.ph
NOTICE ON UNAUTHORIZED AND UNLAWFUL USE, PUBLICATION, AND/OR DISSEMINATION OF SPIN.PH CONTENT: Please be notified that any unauthorized and unlawful use, publication, and/or dissemination of Spin.ph’s content and/or materials is a direct violation of its legal and exclusive rights to the same, and shall be subject to appropriate legal action/s.
