21/01/2014 12:30
Dinamo MOSCOW fires head coach ahead of Playoffs second round
2014 CEV DenizBank Volleyball Champions League - Women
Kazan, Russia, January 21, 2014. After losing 1:3 to Dinamo KAZAN in the first round of the Playoffs 12, the management of Dinamo MOSCOW decided to fire Serbian-born coach Svetlana Ilic, so Leonid Zayko will be at the helm of the team from Russia’s capital city for the return game that is coming up on Wednesday in Tatarstan.
After spending quite some years in Switzerland with Volero ZÜRICH, Svetlana Ilic was appointed head coach of Dinamo MOSCOW shortly before the start of the 2012/2013 season following the sudden death of Sergey Ovchinnikov. Since she started working for Dinamo, the Muscovites lost 9 out of their 11 matches with the team from Kazan, including the finals of last year’s Russian Cup and Superleague and three matches in the CEV Volleyball Champions League, two in January 2013 and another one last week.
“This decision may help their team or ruin it completely” comments the mentor of Dinamo KAZAN Rishat Gilyazutdinov. “I can only guess and try to imagine what kind of mental state the players of Dinamo have as they come to Kazan to play us for the return game. That said, we shall not expect an easy game.”
On Sunday Dinamo MOSCOW lost their first game under the guidance of interim coach Leonid Zayko as Uralochka-NTMK EKATERINBURG claimed a 3:1 away victory (17-25, 25-19, 25-22, and 25-22). After this, Dinamo dropped down to third place in the provisional standing of the Russian Superleague.
Dinamo KAZAN, on the other hand, is the clear leader of the Superleague with a series of 10 straight victories since the start of the season. In the last round the players from Tatarstan edged Dinamo KRASNODAR in straight sets (25-23, 25-16, and 25-19) showing a terrific performance in blocking (they killed 16 block stuffs vs. only one for their opponents). Their superstar Ekaterina Gamova top scored in the game chipping in with 19 points.
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