The start of a new volleyball season is normally measured in matches, rosters and first results.
In Monza, however, the beginning of 2026/27 was celebrated by looking at the bigger picture.
The Vero Volley Day brought the entire club community together at the Opiquad Arena, from the youngest players taking their first steps in volleyball to the athletes preparing for another season in Serie A.
More than 1,000 people attended the event, which presented 60 teams, 730 athletes and 80 coaches. The evening was not simply a presentation of the teams, but a snapshot of the structure that Vero Volley has built around volleyball in the Monza and Milan area, with youth development, professional teams, families, staff and the local community all sharing the same court.
The men’s and women’s first teams were naturally among the main attractions. Vero Volley Monza is preparing for another SuperLega campaign, while Numia Vero Volley Milano represents the club in the women’s Serie A1 and on the European stage.
For Thomas Beretta, the evening had a particular meaning. The Monza captain is entering his 12th consecutive season within the Vero Volley project, making him one of the clearest links between the club’s different generations. For a player who has spent so many years inside the same organisation, watching hundreds of young athletes experience the same presentation from the other side of the court is a reminder of how much the project has grown.
“This is an incredible opportunity for children to meet the Serie A players up close. Even for me, after so many years, it’s a special feeling to see how big our consortium is — not only in numbers but also in values,” he said.
Perhaps the most fitting story of the evening belonged to Nicolò Mapelli. The opposite came through the Vero Volley academy and only recently moved from being one of the youngsters watching the senior players to becoming part of the senior team himself. His experience is almost a perfect illustration of the pathway the club wants to create.
“Until last year, I was among the young volleyball players who watched the stars up close. Then came the first training sessions with the men, the debut, and now this moment,” he recalled.
That transition — from watching Serie A players to sharing the same stage with them — is at the heart of what makes the Vero Volley Day different from a conventional team presentation. The event puts the professional teams at the top of a much larger pyramid rather than presenting them as a separate world.
The numbers underline the scale of that pyramid, but they do not tell the whole story. Vero Volley has continued to place considerable emphasis on developing young players while maintaining teams at the highest level of Italian volleyball. The 2026/27 men’s roster itself reflects that philosophy, combining experienced figures such as Beretta with younger players including Mapelli, Velichkov and several other prospects.
The Opiquad Arena is also more than simply the setting for the annual celebration. It remains the historic home of Vero Volley Monza and will once again host the club’s SuperLega matches during the new season. The venue, which can accommodate up to around 4,000 spectators, has already witnessed some of the most important moments in the club’s recent history, including a Scudetto Final appearance and the beginning of its Champions League adventure.
Now the celebrations are over and the attention turns back to competition. Monza’s SuperLega season begins on October 17 away against newcomers Tinet Prata di Pordenone, while the women’s team is already moving into the early stages of its Serie A campaign.
But for one evening, the result on the scoreboard was irrelevant.
The Vero Volley Day was about showing that behind the players who appear under the lights of Serie A there are hundreds more following the same path — and that, for some of them, the distance between the two worlds may be shorter than it looks.
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