Trento, Italy, February 13, 2014. Belogorie BELGOROD had a relatively short stop in Trento on the way to Ankara, where the Final Four of the 2014 CEV DenizBank Volleyball Champions League - Men will take place next month. The Russian team took 74 minutes to provide Italy’s Diatec TRENTINO with a second quarterfinal shut-out, this time by 3:0 (25-15, 25-20, 25-22), and eliminate the three-time European and four-time world champions from further participation.
From the beginning of the first set, the technical and physical gap between the two teams was clear, as the Italians had to deal with the absence of their two opposites – Tsvetan Sokolov and David Szabo, and the middle blocker, captain Emanuele Birarelli. Hence TRENTINO’s starting seven were totally experimental.
The visiting team from Belgorod set the pace right from the get go and claimed the victory quite comfortably, led by the opposite György Grozer and the giant middle blocker Dmitriy Muserskiy. TRENTINO tried to fight back, but could do nothing to stop Belogorie’s attacks through the middle or to break through their insurmountable block.
After having won the second set and, along with that, the ticket to the Final Four, head coach Gennady Shipulin decided to give some rest to his best players and to give a chance to some of his substitute players. This allowed the hosts of TRENTINO to play with more confidence, but eventually did not change the course of the game.
György Grozer scored 12 points for Belogorie to become the most prolific player of the match. On the home side noteworthy were the performances of the spiker Filippo Lanza who tallied up 9 points and of the young opposite Gabriele Nelli, who chartered his first 4 points in European competition.
“I tried everything I could to fight back, but against teams like this, it is quite useless. Unfortunately, we ended up here today in these bad conditions. I know it is difficult for my players to play in different positions from their usual. I think that if we had had our best players with us, maybe the story could have been different. Tonight we tried. For the future we have to find a way out, as we have important matches ahead of us,” stated TRENTINO’s head coach Roberto Serniotti.
"We are very happy for this victory. Tonight we took advantage of the absence of some injured players, but sometimes volleyball goes like this. For our club it is a very important goal, which Belogorie has not reached for many years,” the Russian team’s setter Dragan Travica commented.
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