Translated material
For one beaten
Belgorod won the Champions League match without the best libero in the world
Russian teams successfully resumed their performances in the European Club Volleyball Champions League after a break associated with the men's world championship that was disastrous for our team (7th place) in Japan. In the fourth round of the group stage, the two-time trophy winner Belgorod Lokomotiv-Belogorye, in the absence of the best libero of the World Cup and the key player of the railway workers Alexei Verbov, beat the German Evivo from the year Duren on the road - 3: 1 (24:26, 25 :21, 25:21, 25:23). The capital's Dynamo team in Moscow defeated the famous Italian Sisley, which arrived in Russia with the second squad - 3:0 (25:16, 25:18, 25:12).Let us remind you that Loko's away victories over the Austrian Tyrol and the French Tour did not bring Gennady Shipulin's team any points. The European Volleyball Confederation counted technical defeats to the Belgorod team for allegedly incorrectly completing the application for Dmitry Musersky, although, as it turned out, the ECV officials themselves made a blunder in this matter. However, this is not an organization that is ready to admit its mistakes. Taking honestly earned points from the Belgorod team meant keeping a good face on a bad game, which is what was eventually done.
To all the misfortunes of Loko, which lost three key volleyball players in the off-season (Vadim Khamuttskikh, Sergei Tetyukhin and Alexander Kosarev moved to Dynamo-TTG Kazan), new personnel problems were added. The head coach of the Russian national team, Zoran Gajic, has repeatedly and completely irrelevantly complained in his interviews that clubs return players to the national team either with injuries or who have lost their condition. And at the same time, Verbov, who finished the World Championship on injections, arrived back at Lokomotiv-Belogorye with a torn back. Extra-long workouts and weight training, the value of which for a libero player is very questionable, led to Verbov being out of action for at least two months. The loss for the club is terrible, because Alexey is not only the strongest volleyball player on the planet in a very important role, but he is also a team leader by nature, and his presence on the court is of great importance in terms of creating fighting spirit.
The Belgorod team arrived in Duren without Verbov and without their mentor Gennady Shipulin. The head coach fell ill, and the doctors categorically forbade him to travel long distances these days. Shipulin's assistant Sergei Lazurkin took over the reins of the team. Only the most inveterate optimists believed that with such a burden of problems, Loko would be able to defeat Evivo on a foreign site - although not a European giant, but a fairly strong club that performs well in its home walls.
And yet, one game was enough for the “railwaymen” to get used to the opponent’s style of action, become bolder, improve their game and seize the initiative. Passer Konstantin Lesik tried to distribute balls approximately equally to Sergei Baranov, Roman Danilov, Alexander Abrosimov and Dmitry Krasikov, each of whom eventually brought the guests a double-digit number of points. The hosts built most of their attacks through the Brazilian Denison and Tim Elsner. At Loko's reception, libero Vitaly Evdoshenko had to take the rap for everyone, showing a quite respectable 62% positive in this element. But the actions of Danilov and Krasikov on the opponent’s serves looked rather weak.
Nevertheless, the Belgorod team, primarily due to their moral and strong-willed qualities and great desire, achieved victory, which, alas, did not significantly change their position in group “A”. The situation here is extremely confusing - the Tour is in the lead with three victories, and then second to fifth places with two victories are shared by the Spanish Portol, Montenegrin Buducnost, Evivo and Lokomotiv. Third position guarantees access to the next stage of the tournament.
Since the results of performances in the group stage do not have any significance for the draw procedure for the next Round of Twelve, the management of Sisley, which won all three previous Champions League matches, considered it possible to bring reserve and youth players to Moscow. On the one hand, no one doubts that the team from Treviso will definitely enter the top three in sextet “B”, and on the other hand, “Sisley” next Sunday will have a very important home match in the Italian Serie A1 against the current champion of the country “ Lube Banka" (Macerata). The Blue and White took advantage of this gift and without much effort added their fourth victory in the tournament.