Istanbul, Turkey, November 18, 2011. After joining the CEV Volleyball Champions League in 2001 and qualifying three times for the final four, Turkey’s Eczacibasi VitrA ISTANBUL is celebrating this year its tenth participation in Europe’s most elitist competition. Mr. Sacit Basmaci, Board member of the Eczacibasi sports club, says: “We have been devoted to the promotion and development of Volleyball for 46 years. We have set extremely high goals also for the upcoming season which are shared by the management, the coaching staff and the players”.
“We had a break of almost one month in our preparations because of the FIVB World Cup” adds head coach Lorenzo Micelli, a two-time winner of the CEV Volleyball Champions League with Italy’s Volley BERGAMO. “We have been focusing on our physical and technical preparation but we have to play tough matches to get ready for the start of this competition. Before we open our campaign against SCHWERINER SC, we will have a couple of friendly games with Russia’s Dinamo KAZAN and fine tune our condition by continuing our march in the national league as well as in the national cup. Even though I think all teams included in Pool A have equal chances to qualify for the Playoffs, still we can profit from our long experience in this competition” he stresses.  
The roster of Eczacibasi is composed by some of the most accomplished stars of Turkey’s national team, like Esra Gümüs, Neslihan Darnel, Gülden Kayalar, and Elif Oner, but also by some very promising players such as Busra Cansu, Asuman Karakoyun and Nesve Büyükbayram. Three foreign stars are included in the group, namely Cuban-born Olympic champion Mirka Francia, plus Maja Poljak and Senna Usic-Jogunica of Croatia.         
“We have been together for almost two months and I think we are well prepared mentally as well as physically. We can rely on our team spirit and our first goal is to make it out of the Pool play” states team captain Esra Gümüs.
Eczacibasi will debut this coming November 29 with an away match against rookie SCHWERINER SC while the next opponents are France’s RC CANNES and MC-Carnaghi VILLA CORTESE of Italy.