Translated material
Spanish Party
The Champions League started with the Kazan team's victory over Unicaja.
The match between the gold medal winner of the 2007 Russian Championship, Dynamo-TTG Kazan, and the Spanish club Unicaja (Almeria) kicked off the European Champions League. The team from the capital of Tatarstan won a difficult victory over its opponent in Group “C” from the city of Almeria - 3:1 (24:26, 25:20, 25:21, 25:21).As you know, in mid-September the Spanish team won the European Championship held in Russia, but the Kazan guests did not have a single volleyball player who received a continental title. The most famous Unicaja player of today is Jose Valido, who played six seasons (2000-2006) in Friedrichshafen, and before returning home, played for one year in the French Tour. Despite the absence of big names in Unicaja, Tuesday’s match turned out to be quite difficult for Dynamo-TTG and again led to the idea that most of the leading players of the blue and white are still far from optimal condition.
The peculiarity of the current Champions League is the unprecedentedly large number of participants - 24 clubs entered the fight for the trophy. The representation of teams from national federations in the tournament was determined according to the recently introduced ranking of the European Volleyball Confederation, taking into account the results of the 2005/06 season. The scoring system for this classification is highly controversial. For example, Lokomotiv-Belogorye, which took third place in the tournament of the strongest teams on the continent last spring, earned fewer points than the capital’s Dynamo due to the results of individual matches. Although the “blue and white” finished in fourth position. According to the CEB regulations, if a country has two representatives in one tournament, then the points scored by only one team are counted towards the total amount of rating points.
Be that as it may, Russia received its two rightful places in the Champions League, and the honor of our country at the European level is defended by “Dynamo-TTG” and the “blue and white” from the capital. Only Italy (Cuneo, Piacenza and Sisley from Treviso) and Greece (Olympiacos, Panathinaikos and Iraklis) have more participants.
Kazan has yet to play with the current winner of the Champions League trophy, the German Friedrichshafen, and one of the three giants of Greek volleyball, Olympiacos, where the central figures are the Bulgarian volleyball players Gaidarski and Yordanov. The Muscovites in Quartet “F” found themselves in the same company with the French capital club Paris Volley, the Belgian Noliko (Maaseik) and the sensational winner of the 2007 Top Teams Cup, the Slovenian team from the city of Bled. Last season it was called "Autokommerz", now the general sponsor has changed, which is reflected in the name of the team - "Ah".
By the way, volleyball players from Bled are not yet playing in their national championship, fighting in the Central European League along with rivals from Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria. They will enter the fight for medals at the Slovenian championship only from the playoffs. Another rival of the capital's Dynamo, Paris Valley, almost ended up in the second division of the French championship. The leaders of the Parisian club, despite the championship, received a warning from the directorate of the national league LNV about the need to repay the debt on entry fees and did not respond to it in a timely manner. Back in the summer, the situation seemed quite realistic in which Paris Valley could start a new national championship in the second division. But the debts were still paid, albeit late, and the Parisians retained their residence in the elite.
The composition of the four other groups is as follows: “A” - “Iraklis”, “Cannes” (France), “Zhikhostroy” (Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic), “Cuneo”; "B" -- SKRA (Belchatov, Poland), "Buducnost" (Podgorica, Montenegro), "Panathinaikos", "Vojvodina" (Novi Sad, Serbia), "D" -- "Hotvolleys" (Vienna, Austria), "Arkasspor" (Izmir, Turkey), "Portol" (Spain), "Piacenza"; “E” - “Sisley”, “Piet Zoomers-Dynamo” (Apeldoorn, Holland), “Knak” (Roselaare, Belgium) and “Jastrzębski” (Yastrzębski-Zdrój, Poland).
The two best teams from each quartet receive the right to play in the first stage of the playoffs - the “Round of Twelve”. After the end of the preliminary stage, from these dozen, the EKB determines the host of the “Final Four”, exempt from the matches of the knockout tournament, and the resulting vacancy is filled by one team that finished in third place in the group with the best additional indicators - points scored, ratio of games won and lost.
Last season, none of the Italian teams managed to win any of the three European Cups, so now the Champions League participants from the Apennine Peninsula are determined to restore the tarnished prestige of national club volleyball. The leaders of Dynamo-TTG announced that Viktor Sidelnikov’s charges were going to aim at winning all three most important trophies - the title of the strongest team in Russia, the National Cup and the Champions League. True, after the defeats of Dynamo-TTG in the domestic championship from their capital teammates and Iskra Odintsovo, yesterday’s very uncertain debut in the Champions League, it is very difficult to believe in the fulfillment of the stated task.