The season 2016/17 has seen Trentino Volley begin a new cycle; after Radostin Stoytchev left Trento in July 2016, Angelo Lorenzetti has become the new coach, who often played against the Yellow-blue Club in the recent past when he trained Piacenza and Modena. Lorenzetti has been positively welcomed by the fans, partly because he had just won the treble (Supercoppa, Coppa Italia and Scudetto) with the team from Emilia-Romagna. He found a starting-six at his disposal, in which he couldn’t change much compared to the previous season. In the role of opposite, in place of Mitar Djuric (who went to Verona) now there is Jan Stokr, who has been welcomed back by the supporters. The beginning of the season, after a short pre-championship retreat in Valsugana, wasn’t so easy; Diatec Trentino immediately suffered two defeats in the Final Four of Supercoppa Italiana, which proved how big the gap from Modena, Perugia and Civitanova was. The fourth place at PalaPanini at the end of the first competition didn’t discourage the players, on the contrary; it boosted their confidence and gave them an important objective, which was getting every day nearer and nearer: playing against anyone on the same level.
The beginning of the championship has been very positive; the first defeat has arrived against Piacenza, after six victories in a row. Meanwhile, the team has participated in the Club World Championship 2016 in Betim (Brazil); Lanza and his team-mates has been invited by Fivb as European vice-champion and after winning their pool, they have lost the semi-final against the Russian team Kazan but being able to win the final for the third place against the Argentinian team Bolivar (at the tie-break). The third place in the world championship has proved to be useful both for the confidence of the players and for the quality achieved after playing five matches in five days in South America. After coming back to Italy, Diatec Trentino has been able to get the second place in the ranking behind Civitanova and has managed to hold this position until the end of the regular season. It has been at PalaTrento that the team of Lorenzetti has played at the highest level, so much so that the team has achieved the best winning streak in Trentino Volley’s history at home: 23 victories in a row and just one defeat. In January there has been space for the seasonal debut in Coppa CEV (almost won two years ago) and for Coppa Italia; Diatec Trentino surprises everyone winning without any kind of troubles the first rounds of the European tournament played versus two Finnish teams, but also achieving the qualification to the finals of the national tournament, winning versus Monza in the quarterfinals and then versus Modena (which was the champion of last year’s edition) in the semi-finals. The third final in a row of Coppa Italia wasn’t tough in favour of Giannelli and his teammates, who lost in Bologna 1-3 giving the trophy to Lube Civitanova.
To blow was not easy to be absorbed, but the team proves to have great character and within few weeks achieved the second place in ranking and got the final of CEV Cup 2017, winning versus Piacenza in the Italian derby and then versus Fenerbahce Istanbul too. The last round of the tournament versus the French team of Tours has been played in the middle of the period of Play Off Scudetto; Diatec Trentino gave the impression of being able to win the tournament thanks to an impressive 3-0 in going match at home, but then undid everything in the return match, giving a 1-3 victory to the French team and the golden set too, as happened in Moscow in 2015. In this case too, the defeat created a good reaction of pride; so, in the Play Off Trento, which won in the quarterfinals versus Monza without any kind of troubles, got an important victory the semi-finals Scudetto in match 5 versus Perugia. The team from Umbria, built last summer after having bought the best available players, bowed to the law of PalaTrento and left on; for Trentino Volley is the eighth Scudetto final of its history and the opponent is a well-known one: Lube Civitanova of Sokolov and Juantorena.
The very formers were the executioners of the yellow-blues, who fought a lot but lost the series of matches and the scudetto already in match 3 after very different matches. For the second year in a row the company of via Trener couldn’t celebrate any trophy but what remains is the conviction of having started a new important circle, with young but mature players like Giannelli and Lanza, who have the capacity to make the team further grow with the good guide of Lorenzetti. It is not a coincidence that the company of Trento renewed, already during the season, their contracts. |
