Waterpolo: Di Fulvio super, scored from 100 games in a row!

This is what fate would have it: a special record in front of a special opponent. It is against Stefano Tempesti’s Ortigia, one of the goalkeepers who have made the history of Pro Recco, that Francesco Di Fulvio has crossed a magical milestone: scoring in 100 consecutive A-1 games. All the ones he played, excluding those skipped by turnover. An extraordinary series that began on 13 May 2017, with the Ligurian 16-3 on Canottieri Napoli. The last match in which he remained dry dates back to the week before, on May 6, when the Pro Recco lost 7-6 on the Brescia field – the team in which the Abruzzo player had played in 2013-2014 – in the penultimate round of the regular season (then the 31st Biancoceleste Scudetto would come). A defeat that – speaking of large numbers – interrupted the gold streak: 73 consecutive victories (from 13 December 2014), better than the women’s volleyball Teodora Ravenna who stopped at 72 between 85 and 87.

PRIDE

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Against the Syracusans, on the fifth day of the second phase, it ended 7-5 for Sandro Sukno’s team, already arithmetically earlier. For Francesco, who scored the 3-0 penalty after 5’30 “of the second half (and in these 100 appearances he reached 259), a goal that would have been crossed much earlier if the definitive suspension of the 2019-2020 championship and the long break this year, again due to Covid. It’s not football, okay, but the figures remain eloquent. “Against a formidable goalkeeper who made an extraordinary match – comments Di Fulvio – I could only score on a penalty… He wrote the history of water polo, for me he was like an older brother and I will never stop thanking him. It is a goal that I want to share with my teammates who put me in a position to score. Now, however, it is enough to count the goals. What do I remember with the most pleasure? It would be obvious to talk about those in the Scudetto finals, so I choose the one of the victory against Brescia in December 2018, in Sori: it came a few seconds from the siren after an exciting match “.

FAMILY TRADITION

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A great counter-attacker, born to score but never selfish, the twenty-eight-year-old striker grew up in the myth of Manuel Estiarte, star of Pescara where Di Fulvio senior, Franco, born in ’63, champion of Italy and Europe in ’87 played. , now coach (there was also Amedeo Pomilio, assistant of Sandro Campagna in Settebello). A whole family and swimming pool: the brothers Andrea and Carlo also water polo, their mother Monica swimming instructor and triathlete. The first coach of Francesco “Freccia Azzurra” (copyright Dario Di Gennaro, RaiSport), was Marco D’Altrui, Olympic gold medalist in Barcelona ’92. To shape his talent, among others, the late Nando Pesci who revealed: “In 2013, during the Under 20 world final in Szombathely in Hungary, against Croatia he injured his finger. He wanted to get back in the water at all costs, we won 10-7 and he made a hat-trick. If this is not character ”. Then a more prestigious World Cup would come, the one with Settebello in 2019 in Gwangju, South Korea (the year in which the Pescara player was elected best European player by Len). This year there will be the appointment in Budapest to defend the title: Campagna, at the beginning of the season, asked him for greater responsibility, considering that there will not be some historical senators. In Liguria, Francesco has won five league titles, two Champions, two European Super Cups and six Italian Cups. Sandro Bovo, his technician in Brescia, a Waterpolo Development: “I tried to hold him back by telling him that he wouldn’t find much space in the Recco, among so many champions. He replied that he feared no one. It wasn’t a boast, it was the truth ”.

EURO CUP

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On Di Fulvio’s big day, a bitter defeat for Telimar: in the second leg of the Euro Cup, the Spaniards of Sabadell win 11-5, overturning the 9-7 with which the Palermitans had imposed themselves in the first leg. But for Gu Baldineti’s team there remains a season to remember.