Karpol

LATEST NEWS:BOOK ABOUT KARPOL HAS BEEN PUBLISHED!

New book on Karpol has just been published!! Written by Croatian sports journalist Tomislav Birtić, it is titled "Karpol: Lunatics--That's What I Need" (Karpolj: Trebaju mi luđaci in hrvatsko). This revealing book is a must-read for all those who want to answer the question of Karpol's coaching style, including the reasoning behind his methodology, nutrition requirements, psychological conditioning, differences between genders, the story with Irina Parkhomchuk/Kirillova, among many other things. If you want to really understand this wonderful man, this book will give you all the insight you can get short of meeting him in person. Please contact the author at: OR search for NAKLADA KAPITOL publishers in Zagreb, Croatia.

Our favourite coach, Kolja, going off on poor Marina Nikulina at the '91 World Cup. Even if she hadn't made a terrible mistake, she got the scolding regardless...

Karpol, irate as ever

One always wonders "why"...
I guess it's Karpol's own way of making his players react. And what's scarier is that volleyball history has MANY recorded instances of the effectiveness of this in-your-face coaching style, which Volleyball Magazine described as a "verbal undressing".

The image on the left is from a time-out during the Soviet Union's match against Peru at the '91 Japan World Cup. It was right after Irina Smirnova hit a beautiful and powerful cross-court attack which Peruvian Natalia Málaga dug. The strength of the attack was such that

the ball made a really HIGH parabola and then fell on Soviet court. The Russians seized the extra seconds to scramble into their respective positions. Marina Nikulina got ready to set, Smirnova was ready to begin her approach, Ogienko and Chebukina were getting ready to cover the block. But they forgot a crucial detail: who was going to pass the free ball?? Well, in the end nobody did (I personally think it should've been Batukhtina) and the ball landed in the dead middle of the court. Smirnova rolled her eyes. Nikulina froze instantly. Because such a blunder could only mean one thing... "Time out!!!!!"

"Bozhe moi" was probably what went through Masha's head as she and her five other teammates approached Karpol. And what happened next is something that she has seen SO MANY TIMES... yet, they always seemed petrified at the thought of a time-out.

So why does Karpol like to be known as the Howling Bear?

It seems that Karpol tends to yell primarily at his setters. But why? Maybe because Karpol doesn't want to take the confidence away from his attackers. So if he has to yell and put somebody down, well, it has to be the setter, unfortunately. That severely limits the setter's creative ability, her desire to run things with a bit more risk, and innovation, and wit. The result has been an incredibly dulling of Russia's offence, which is as ugly to see as it is efficient (the reason to be explained later).

In the example I described above, it wasn't Nikulina's fault. It's not her duty to be passing free balls. However, she got the stick anyway. Poor Nikulina. Not only did she have to pick up after Irina Parkhomchuk's responsibilities, but she had to endure the howlings of the "Russian bear". In the Olympic finals in Seoul, although Karpol yelled at the whole team, he directed his anger mainly at Irina Parkhomchuk to make react. And they won, pulling off one of the greatest comebacks in history against the Peruvian underdogs.

Photo: Daniela Tarantini [FIVB]

And since then we've been seeing how each new Russian setter has had to undergo these Karpolian thundershowers. Parkhomchuk defected to Croatia (for what reason? I'm not sure). Nikulina then took her position. Tatyana Grachova, the ever-beautiful and graceful setter from the 1991 Junior World Championship Team, relieved Nikulina of her duties in '93, at the First Edition of the World Grand Champions Cup. Then briefly in '94 Maria Likhtenshtein showed signs of being the next Russian setter (but then she too left Russia for Croatia). But during the last two years of the '90s, the setter has been Yelena Vassilievskaya, a very short, baby-faced girl who also happens to be the team captain.

In all five setters we have seen the same style of play. It seems as if Karpol were terrorising his setters to the point of utter conservatism.

Let's go through it ourselves. Russia's offence consisted/consists of:

High balls outside or back-row to their powerful outside hitters (Smirnova, Sidorenko, Artamonova, Menshova, Godina, Batukhtina) or
Quick slides to their middle blockers or opposite hitters (Ogienko, Tischenko, Emelianova, Chachkova-Sokolova); and
rare quick "one" balls to Ogienko or Chebukina, and even rarer still to Morozova and Tischenko.

In the times of Parkhomchuk, she ran more quick ones with Ogienko and Chebukina, and she was creative enough to fake quick hits herself and then set the "one" ball in front of her. This play soon became vintage Russian and had been continued by Nikulina but is done no longer. I felt particularly bad for Natalia Morozova, who rarely hit those quick "one"s, or anything for that matter. Play conservatively, set the outside, high, VERY HIGH. And after the "ooohhhh!" from the the wide-eyed audience, the excitement of Russian volleyball ended there.

So has Karpol's enraged coaching style enforced this sense of conservatism onto his team? And if so, will it remain as such after he leaves? Will Russian setters ever get as elaborate as every other setter in the world? And if they do, it will be interesting to see how Russia adapts its offence to the quicker, more creative setting of a tension-free setter. Something to look forward to for the next millenium I guess. (Something to ask Valja--his assistant... and successor??)

Karpol, during the 1991 Gala Match. [FIVB Photo Archives]