Translated material
Magic hand
On Berezhko's serve, the capital's Dynamo won 12 points in a row
For the second round in a row, the men's super league calendar presents fans of the game with a match of the giants. If last week the current winner of the gold medals of the national championship, Dynamo (Moscow), met with the silver medalist, Iskra Odintsovo, then yesterday the blue and white visited the winner of the Champions League, Zenit Kazan, which achieved the greatest success in its history also called “Dynamo-TTG”.Before the game, attention was focused on two duels. Firstly, potential candidates for the position of head coach of the Russian national team in the new Olympic cycle competed. These are Vladimir Alekno (Zenit), who worked with the national team in 2007-2008, and the Italian Daniele Bagnoli, whose number of club titles at the highest level (Russia, Italy, European cups) is in his fourth decade. Secondly, diagonal attackers, considered one of the strongest in their role on the planet, opposed each other - the hosts' main scorer, Olympic champion American Clayton Stanley, and Dynamo's Semyon Poltavsky.
At the tense end of the first game, Alekno took a timeout with the score 23:24 - it didn’t help. Dynamo's Yuriy Berezhko's mistake on serve was corrected by Brazilian Dante, and the blue-and-whites converted the match point with a triple block, which effectively shut down Stanley's attack. In the next set, to Kazantsev’s misfortune, Poltavsky’s serve went. A couple of minutes after the second technical break, the guests' advantage reached an impressive 20:13.
Something unreal and fantastic happened in the third game. And it would be okay if it were a game of teams of different classes, but in a meeting of approximately equal opponents, what happened smacks of surrealism and even magic. When the Muscovites were losing 12:16, Yuri Berezhko came out to serve. And in one formation, the “blue and white” won a dozen points in a row. It’s as if the people of Kazan were under a spell. They made mistakes in the attack and in the reception, they ran into the opponent’s block and could not “get away”, as they say in volleyball slang. Berezhko himself, who continually made it difficult for his opponent to receive, was already smiling and throwing up his hands, but continued to remain in the serving zone. True, his magic hand never got a match point, since Dynamo did not score the transition goal. However, in the next episode, Kazan's Apalikov kicked into touch, and the amazing meeting ended.
The first victory in the tournament was won by Novosibirsk Lokomotiv, the fourth team in the previous championship. For the railroad's rival club NOVA (Novokuibyshevsk), which returned to the elite, this defeat was the third in the tournament. The best scorer of the 2006 World Cup and the 2007 World Cup, the diagonal national team of Puerto Rico, Hector Soto, traditionally for his career in Russia, played the match as a finisher, his teammate and regular “scorer” of the Siberians Nikolai Pavlov won 22 goals and, together with the Olympic champion American William Priddy hit three aces.
Ufa Ural set a record benchmark for those in the starting phase of the season, allowing Yaroslavich to score only 11 points in the last, third game. Leonid Kuznetsov from the winning team won eight goals on a block, and this is also the best result in the current championship. Novy Urengoy Fakel, having celebrated its third victory in a row, may still regret losing a point in the meeting with the Gazprom-Yugra club (Surgut region).
Iskra became the sole leader of the championship, beating Metalloinvest with the same score in all games - “plus 5”. Loko-Belogorye lost three points in the battle with a surprisingly angry and unyielding team from Nizhnevartovsk. “Ugra-Samotlor”, which finished the last championship in 10th place, is demonstrating amazing fighting qualities for the third match in a row. In the first round at the Kazan site, the Nizhnevartovians played the longest game in the championship with the hosts so far (38:40). Then they prevailed in a tiebreaker away from the Novosibirsk railway workers, and yesterday they defeated the team of Gennady Shipulin, which is among the main contenders for gold.
Results. Super League. 3rd round. "Fakel" - "Gazprom-Yugra" - 3:2 (25:19, 25:27, 29:27, 24:26, 15:13), "Ural" - "Yaroslavich" - 3:0 (25:19, 26:24, 25:11), "Lokomotiv" Ns - NOVA - 3:1 (25:21, 23:25, 25:17, 25:19), "Iskra" - " Metalloinvest - 3:0 (25:20, 25:20, 25:20), Zenit - Dynamo M - 0:3 (24:26, 22:25, 17:25), " Lokomotiv-Belogorye" - "Ugra-Samotlor" - 1:3 (25:17, 23:25, 19:25, 20:25).
Super League. Men
| 1. "Spark" | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9:2 | 9 |
| 2. "Torch" | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 9:2 | 8 |
| 3. Dynamo M | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7:3 | 6 |
| 4. Zenit | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6:3 | 6 |
| 5. "Ural" | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 6:3 | 6 |
| 6. “Lokomotiv-Belogorye” | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7:4 | 6 |
| 7. "Ugra-Samotlor" | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 6:6 | 5 |
| 8. Lokomotiv Ns | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 7:7 | 5 |
| 9. "Yaroslavich" | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3:8 | 2 |
| 10. Gazprom-Yugra | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3:9 | 1 |
| 11. NOVA | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 2:9 | 0 |
| 12. "Metalloinvest" | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0:9 | 0 |
B -- wins 3:0, 3:1 (3 points); VT -- tiebreaker wins 3:2 (2); L -- losses in tiebreaker (1); L -- defeats 0:3, 1:3 (0).