Luxembourg, April 27, 2017. This coming weekend, Sir Sicoma Colussi PERUGIA will be trying to use the home-court advantage to seize what would be a historic men’s CEV Volleyball Champions League crown – the first for Italy since TRENTINO Diatec completed an unprecedented hat trick between 2009 and 2011.

The hosts of this year’s Final Four are making only their second appearance in Europe’s elite competition – two years ago their campaign ended in the Playoffs 6 when they lost to Poland’s PGE Skra BELCHATOW. Sir Sicoma Colussi are still ‘young’ as a club and this is only their third season in European competitions – after their Champions League debut in 2015, last year they played in the CEV Cup where they lost in the Challenge Round to Russia’s Dinamo MOSCOW.

However, they are definitely hungry for success and the fact that they just lost to TRENTINO Diatec in a dramatic semi-final series of the Italian national league will add an extra boost of motivation to the men coached by Lorenzo Bernardi.

Ivan Zaytsev, Luciano De Cecco and Aleksandar Atanasijevic are undoubtedly the superstars on a team that claimed five of the six matches they contested in Pool E – where they played star-studded opponents such as Russia’s Belogorie BELGOROD and Turkey’s Halkbank ANKARA. Even though USA outside spiker Aaron Russell suffered a serious injury earlier this season, Austria’s Alexander Berger has stepped in for Russell and shown he has what it takes to complete a superb starting six including also two very experienced middle blockers in Emanuele Birarelli and Marko Podrascanin and libero Andrea Bari.

Actually, PERUGIA’s campaign in this year’s Champions League started in the third round already where they dropped one set but easily swept aside Switzerland’s national champions Volley AMRISWIL.

Sir Sicoma Colussi PERUGIA will try to emulate what TRENTINO Diatec did in 2011 – when Matey Kaziyski & Co. stood on top of the podium in Bolzano, thus using the home-court advantage in what is the last Final Four to have taken place in Italy before PalaLottomatica hosts a huge Volleyball party later this weekend.

In order to achieve this feat, PERUGIA will first have to claim the all-Italian derby with Cucine Lube CIVITANOVA in the semis. These two teams have crossed their ways three times this season with PERUGIA recording a victory back in September in the semis of the Supercup, before Lube pulled off 3-2 and 3-1 wins during the regular season of the Italian league.

Ivan Zaytsev is literally the cover boy of this Final Four and knowing that Rome is somehow his ‘second home’, you can expect thousands of fans to flock to PalaLottomatica to cheer the ‘Block Devils’ on as they attempt to write history for their club and city. Perugia, however, are no strangers in Volleyball of the highest level, with their former women’s team Colussi Sirio having claimed the Champions League top honours in 2006 and 2008.

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