Nikola Grbic was the first winner captain of Trentino Volley

Ph. Trabalza

Trento, October 11st, 2015

Da Francesco Lavorato to Filippo Lanza, through Tofoli and Bernardi but even for someone, Burgsthaler or Della Lunga, wore the band only a couple of times to replace the effective member who was absent for injury in a single match. The fifteen seasons of Trentino Volley’s activities bring with them stories and statistics of any kind, with respect to the figure of the captain; the formalization of Lanza as a player that from this season will play this role, provides an opportunity to dedicate a separate chapter to this subject, reliving particular facts and anecdotes.
They were twelve total players to play this important task at least for one official game of the Trentino Volley’s history: the first one was Francesco Lavorato who unfortunately, due to an injury sustained while preparing the summer of 2000, for seven days had to follow the match from the bench before being able to celebrate the first effective presence.  The athlete who wore the band most of the time, is the first one that also had the opportunity to raise more trophies (precisely, honor reserved to captains): Matey Kaziyski, 204 matches and 12 titles. Besides the Bulgarian spiker only two other captains were able to raise a Cup: two each for Nikola Grbic and Emanuele Birarelli.
With his 24 years, Lanza will be the youngest player in the history of the Club to play this role; the elderly were instead Paolo Tofoli and Lorenzo Bernardi (36 years and 8 months old), followed by Grbic (36 years and 7 months old). Mister Century and Matthew Burgsthaler (regular player in 4 games in the 2013/14 season to replace Birarelli - engaged with the national and then injured) are the only players born in Trento to have been captains. The band is mostly worn by setters; they have been four the setters to wear it: Tofoli, Meoni, Grbic and Raphael. The opposite was instead the role considered far less "suitable": only Sartoretti (captain in the 2004/05 season) has had the honor of being the most representative player on races and ... cards.

Below the list of those who have played the role of captain in the first fifteen seasons of activities of Trentino Volley, ranked according to number of games played in the role:

1.Matey Kaziyski, 204 times between 2009 and 2013

2. Birarelli Emanuele, 91 times between 2013 and 2015

3.Nikola Grbic, 85 times between 2007 and 2009

4.Marco Meoni, 64 times between 2005 and 2007

5.Paolo Tofoli, 60 times between 2001 and 2003

6.Andrea Sartoretti, 40 times between 2004 and 2005

7.Lorenzo Bernardi, 31 times between 2003 and 2004

8.Lavorato Francesco, 28 times between 2000 and 2001

9.Burgsthaler Matthew, 4 times between 2013 and 2014

10. Osmany Juantorena, two times between 2010 and 2011

11. Dore Della Lunga, one time between 2010 and 2011

12. Raphael Vieira de Oliveira, one time between 2011 and 2012

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