The Siberian club reached the Final Four as the host

Novosibirsk Lokomotiv has been chosen as the host of the most prestigious club tournament in European volleyball. It will host the Final Four of the Volleyball Champions League. It will be quite difficult for any of the other two Russian teams that made it to the play-offs—Dynamo Moscow or Zenit Kazan—to join him. In the rounds leading up to the Final Four, the Italian giants Trentino stand in the way of both.

All three Russian clubs that started in the tournament reached the play-offs of the Champions League. And according to the regulations, everyone, like the rest of the teams that made it to the cup stage, had the right to qualify for the “Final Four” of the main continental club competition on March 16–17. Lokomotiv took advantage of it and achieved success. Thus, Russia will host the prestigious tournament for the first time since 2007: five years ago, Dynamo Moscow was its host. True, Lokomotiv has already announced that it will organize it not at its home arena in Novosibirsk, but in Omsk - in the palace used by the hockey team Avangard.

Thanks to this, Russia is guaranteed to receive one participant in the Final Four: its owner is exempt from selection. The more difficult question to answer is whether she will have a second representative in the top four. The fact is that the play-off draw for the other two teams was extremely unsuccessful.

If Zenit and Lokomotiv finished first in their groups, then Dynamo, which was unlucky enough to be in the same four as the Polish Skra, the finalist of the previous draw and one of the favorites of the current one, was second. The European Volleyball Confederation (CEV), unlike, say, the Union of European Football Associations, does not distribute teams based on baskets when drawing lots for the starting round, but those who took the top line in the standings still receive a serious advantage. It consists in the fact that these clubs play the return match at home.

What made this moment important was the format. In the volleyball Champions League, if opponents exchange victories, then, regardless of how many games each of them lost, a so-called golden set is played to determine the best. And it’s much more profitable, of course, to play it on your own site.

However, even without mentioning this circumstance, it is clear that Dynamo failed during the draw. In the round of 16 they will have to deal with Trentino, a club that won the Champions League three times in a row between 2009 and 2011 and has an excellent squad. Even before the start of the league, the bookmakers assigned the Italian team the status of an unconditional contender for victory in it.

There is also a clause in the CEV regulations that excludes three clubs from the same country from participating in the Final Four. Therefore, in the bracket, the Trentino-Dynamo pair meets the Zenit-Berlin pair in the quarterfinals. Kazan, of course, must beat their rivals from Germany. But then it will be incredibly difficult for them.

But even if Dynamo fails to cope with the Italians, this will not mean that Lokomotiv will certainly remain in their Final Four without their compatriots. It was Zenit that won the Champions League last season, and on the way to its triumph, in the semi-finals, it dealt with Trentino quite confidently - in four games.

Alexey Dospehov

Lokomotiv will wait for its own