12/03/2016 20:05
Dinamo KRASNODAR celebrate dominant win to vie for second CEV Cup crown
2016 CEV Volleyball Cup - Women
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 12, 2016. On Saturday Azeryol BAKU were not able to cause a sensation and storm back from the 3-0 loss they had suffered last Tuesday at the hands of Dinamo KRASNODAR in the first leg of the 2016 CEV Volleyball Cup – Women semi-finals. After achieving a historic qualification for the semis of Europe’s second most prestigious club competition, Azeryol had to admit a second defeat to the 2015 gold medallists from Russia who celebrated another 3-0 win (25-17, 27-25, 25-17) to remain in contention for back-to-back titles in the CEV Volleyball Cup. The final matches with Turkey’s Galatasaray Daikin ISTANBUL will be contested on March 29 and April 2, 2016.
Azeryol eased things up for their opponent making many mistakes in the opening set, which Dinamo eventually comfortably claimed by 25-17. Though the players of Azeryol motivated by their young, energetic coach Ziya Rajabov stepped up their efforts in the second set, improving their performance and reducing the number of mistakes, Dinamo KRASNODAR had the upper hand at 27-25 and with this second set win the Russians secured their progression to the CEV Cup finals. The third set was not going to change the final outcome of this double header but again Azeryol helped their opponent by making more mistakes and the Russian giant cruised to another 25-17 win to celebrate another clear-cut victory.
Dinamo KRASNODAR team captain Liubov Sokolova said: “It was tough because we were controlling the match quite easily but in the second set Azeryol started to defend a lot better and made it a lot tougher for us. However, everything is fine because in the end we won this match as well and now our next goal is to win against Galatasaray in the finals.”
Russian star Alexandra Pasynkova said: “Azeryol played better here in Baku than they had done a few days ago in Russia as they got to feel the support of their fans. However, this did not stop us and prevent us from winning this second round as well. At the beginning of the season we had set the goal of reaching the finals of the CEV Volleyball Cup as we had done in 2015 as well. Last year we had the upper hand against a Polish team [PGE Atom Trefl SOPOT] in the finals and now we are going to play against Galatasaray. We know that Turkish Volleyball teams are strong but we hope and believe that Galatasaray will not be able to end our winning streak in this competition.”
Home star Katerina Zhidkova commented: “Dinamo served really well and we could not handle that. This was our main problem in the first set tonight. The second set was a lot closer and very important because by winning it, we would have stayed in contention for a spot in the finals. However, even though we tried very hard, in the end we could not achieve our goal. I nevertheless want to congratulate my team, even though we could not win and reach the final stage of this competition. Though our team does not consist of star players, this did not prevent us from playing, fighting, and we will continue in the same way also for the rest of the season. I also want to thank the fans because without their support we would have never achieved these outstanding results. Personally I feel like I could play as well as I did and I could fight until the end because I could rely on the support of my family and especially of my husband who was also in attendance among the crowd.”
The Hungarian-born middle blocker of Azeryol Edina Dobi said: “They were stronger of course, but in the first set we made too many mistakes. In the second set we somehow avoided these mistakes, and we could give them a real fight. Unfortunately luck was rather on their side in the end. In the third set we were kind of overwhelmed with our emotions because after losing two sets we knew we could not change the outcome of this clash. This certainly did not help us in trying to win at least that set. We are not sad, because we did not have an easy run up to this stage of the competition, and in my opinion we did a really good job this season. We have had a good time, we want to continue to improve and we will keep on going.”
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