Szczecin, Poland, April 5, 2015.  Tonight a dream came true for Eczacibasi VitrA ISTANBUL!  The Turkish team finally won the long-anticipated gold from the women’s Champions League.  The players of Italian head coach Giovanni Caprara shut out the Italian team of Unendo Yamamay BUSTO ARSIZIO by 3:0 (25-22, 25-20, 25-21) in the final to triumph with the trophy of the 2015 CEV DenizBank Volleyball Champions League.

In the breath-taking ambience at the Azoty Arena in Szczecin, the two teams played a very competitive first set.  Unendo Yamamay put on some great blocking efforts, but eventually could not hold on to a 16-12 lead.  Maja Poljak continued her great performance from Saturday’s semifinal.  In the end she blocked a spike by Valentina Diouf to close the set at 25-22.  Eczacibasi VitrA started the second set with a 3-0 lead. Unendo Yamamay managed to catch up on several occasions, but was never able to turn things around.  With Bethania De La Cruz on fire in offence, the Turkish squad regained control and won the set by a comfortable 25-20.  With their backs against the wall, the players of Unendo Yamamay put on a fight in the third set.  The suspense was alive through 16-16.  After 20-19, however, broke away with 3 consecutive points.  The opponents responded with two, but it was not enough to change history.  At 25-21, the glorious moment for Eczacibasi Vitra ISTANBUL finally came…  The Turkish team deservedly was standing on the top of Europe!

Four players scored 13 points each to jointly top the scorers’ chart of the match – Eczacibasi’s Gozde Yilmaz, Bethania De La Cruz and Jordan Larson-Burbach and Unendo Yamamay’s Valentina Diouf.

Esra Gumus Kirici, captain of Eczacibasi VitrA:  “We prepared very hard and worked very hard for this tournament.  I am very happy that we won this cup, it is a great feeling.  It is my first gold medal from a European competition.  I know that the Polish fans are very loud during the matches and they really like volleyball so it is amazing that we had such big support not only from our fans.”

Francesca Marcon, captain of Unendo Yamamay:  “When you play, you want to win everything, so we are a little sad about the result of the last match, but very happy about this silver medal.  I want to congratulate my teammates, because I think we made a great progress during this season.  This arena, its audience and hard matches against strong teams – this is what I am going to remember from this Final Four.”

Carlo Parisi, head coach of Unendo Yamamay:  “Right now we are very happy with this second place and maybe only a bit dissatisfied with the result of the final match.  This is a historic moment for us – the highest step we took so far.  It was a spectacular Final Four at a beautiful arena and even though the home team was not in the final match, we had a fantastic audience.”