Istanbul, Turkey, March 29, 2014. The women’s volleyball team of Fenerbahce SK. ISTANBUL completed a historic day for the fans of the Turkish club. They followed up on their men’s clubmates from earlier today to win the 2014 CEV Volleyball Cup - Women by shutting out their opponents in the decisive final played at a sold-out Burhan Felek volleyball by the Bosporus. Having won the away game by 3:2, the Yellow Angels confirmed their superiority over Russia’s Uralochka-NTMK EKATERINBURG with a 3:0 (25-11, 28-26, 25-22) victory at home.
The first set was a one-team show with Fenerbahce’s blocking completely stopping any attempts by the Russians to stay competitive. With the help of 6 kill blocks, the home heroines broke away to win the set by a landslide 25-11.
The second set was the most interesting one and featured frequent changes in the lead. Both sides showed a great performance in serving and blocking, but Fenerbahce’s better spiking efforts gave the Turkish squad the edge in the set. Still, after saving two set points for Uralochka, the Yellow Angels closed it at 28-26 with a kill block by Eda Erdem Dundar.
The third set was also marked by many ups and downs in the score, but for the most part, Marcello Abbondanza’s team was in control. Once again it played better than Nikolai Karpol’s players in offense to win the set by 25-22 and the match by 3:0.
Korean Yeon-Koung Kim became the best scorer of the match, contributing 16 points (4 aces) to Fenerbahce’s victory. Aneta Havlickova and Christina Bauer added 12 and 11 points, respectively, with the latter tallying up 5 kill blocks. Yumilka Ruiz Luaces was Uralochka’s most prolific player with 11 points.
Kim was honored as the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the final. “I am very happy because when I came to Burhan Felek and I saw our supporters I knew they deserved this cup,” she stated after the match.
“This is an incredible day for us!” Eda Erdem exclaimed. “Both the men's team and we won continental cups. This is unbelievable and history will write about this day and about us.”
Head coach Marcello Abbondanza was also very emotional: “We concentrated well and played good volleyball. We are very excited because our club won two cups today.”
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