Luxembourg, February 5, 2021. VakifBank Istanbul allowed no surprises in the second round-robin tournament of Pool C in the women’s CEV Champions League Volley 2021 and became the sole team from the pool to advance to the next stage in Europe’s strongest club competition. They have now made the quarterfinals 12 seasons in a row.

The four-time continental and three-time world club champions topped the final standings with six wins and 18 points in six matches, awaiting for their quarterfinal opponent to emerge from the drawing on lots scheduled on February 12.



At the three-day event in Lodz, the Turkish powerhouse produced the exact same results they did at the November tournament in Plovdiv. On the first two days, they shut out Poland’s LKS Commercecon Lodz and France’s ASPTT Mulhouse VB, and on the third they beat Bulgaria’s Maritza Plovdiv by 3-1.

While VakifBank’s setter Maja Ognjenovic, a reigning world and European champion with the national team of Serbia, went about her usual business doing her magic in organising the offence, Swedish opposite Isabelle Haak took care of most of the scoring. Across the three games in Lodz, she hammered out 63 points to total 115 since the start of the competition and become the third best scorer of the pool stage. And her points were nicely spread out across all elements and included 14 blocks and 13 aces. The latter put her on top of the best servers chart in the entire fourth round of the Champions League season.



In fact, in Lodz the four teams emulated the outcome of all matches played in Plovdiv. Thus, tournament hosts LKS Commercecon defeated both ASPTT and Maritza to finish second in the pool, but their record of four wins and 11 points placed them just below the cut-off line for the quarterfinals.

The squad from Mulhouse settled for third on a 2-4 win-loss record, while the Bulgarian champions finished winless at the bottom of the table, but proud to be the only ones to have won a set from VakifBank, and twice that is - once in each of their encounters.