The setter of Trentino Volley Simone Giannelli
ph. fivb.org
Trento, 4th January 2017
Tomorrow night, Thursday 5th January, Trentino Volley will officially start the 2017 CEV Cup; at 5:30 pm CET the team will take the court against Finnish team Hurrikaani Loimaa for the sixteen-finals of the second most important European competition. The first away game of this new challenge will be broadcasted live on Radio Dolomiti and on streaming at www.laola1.tv.
HERE DIATEC TRENTINO Eight months after the CEV Champions League 2016 Final in Cracow, lost at tie break against Kazan, the Yellow-blues will play their first match of the year; after three victories in a row, Lanza and his teammates are determined to win the match and bring three points back home.
“This debut in an international competition offers new emotions and adrenaline to those who will step on the court- said trainer Angelo Lorenzetti- We are ready to play a great match and start in the best possible way. Hurrikaani is a great team, with great players and very good servers. We need to keep focused and play as we did in the last games.”
The coach has decided to leave opposite spiker Gabriele Nelli and middle-blocker Daniele Mazzone at home and both are staying in Trento; so only 12 players will be available for the match. During the previous nine presences in the European cups Trentino Volley has always won the first match. Two times the debut was an away game, like tomorrow: in edition 2009/10 of Champions, when the Yellow-blues played the first match of the tournament in Athens winning against Olympiacos Piraeus of Djuric and Milijkovic 3-2 (December 2009) and in the previous experience in CEV Cup (2014/15), when Trento won 3-1 in Novi Sad (4th November 2014).
THIRD PARTICIPATION FOR TRENTINO VOLLEY IN CEV CUP This is the third participation in CEV Cup for Trentino Volley, the eleventh in Europe including the seventh presences in CEV Champions League (six in a row between 2008 and 2014 and the most recent in 2016). The only two precedents in this competition date 2004/05 and 2014/15: in the first occasion, the yellow-blue Club started to play in Top Teams Cup, hosting at PalaTrento the first four-team pool of the first round of qualifications with Famagusta (Cyprus), Strassen (Luxemburg) and Rotterdam (Holland), where it was eliminated, but it could play in CEV Cup thanks to the second place of got in the pool. The team was trained by Prandi and was able to get the qualification to the eight-finals winning in Odense (Denmark) another four-team pool including the home team, Pribram (Czech Republic) and Patrasso (Greece). The adventure ended in the following round at the hands of Halkbank Ankara, which won 3-1 on 7th and 15th December 2004. The experience of 2014/15 was luckier, because Trentino Volley placed second behind Dynamo Moscow, which was able to win at the golden set after two very different matches (Russian victory at PalaTrento and Yellow-blue victory in Russia). To get this result, the team trained by Stoytchev was able to win against Novi Sad in 16th-finals, Tel Aviv in eight-finals, Cracow in quarter-finals and Roeselare in the challenge round and Kedzierzyn-Kozle in semi-finals.
FIRST EVER AWAY MATCH IN FINLAND The first ever transfer to Finland started today and will end on Friday evening when Trentino Volley will return to Italy passing through Verona. Thanks to 2017 CEV Cup the team has been to sixteen European countries in the last eleven year of international activity. In total the Club of via Trener has played fifty-three away matches in Europe (ten only in CEV Cup), being able to win forty-one times. In Loimaa Trentino Volley will play the 128th international match of its whole history (balance: 106 victories, 21 defeats).
RIVALS Trentino Volley will play against one of the most important Clubs of Finland. Hurrikaani of Loimaa, a town with 13,000 inhabitants in the region Varsinais-Suomi in the south of Finland, is one of the most important Clubs with great ambitions to get the first national titles. This is its second participation in a row in CEV Cup thanks to the third place of the last Mestaruusliiga, the Finnish first division. In the previous occasion it lost in the 16th-finals against the Austrian team AICH/DOB. In its short history (the Club was established in 2007) it has played the Challenge Cup four times in a row, without being able to qualify to the eight-finals (reached just in 2013). During last summer it invested important resources reinforcing its team with brothers Mikko and Matti Oivanen, opposite and middle-blocker (former player of Piacenza in 2009/10, trained by Lorenzetti), but also with the Australian setter Peacock (former player of Verona) and his fellow-countryman, the hitter Smith. In the team there are also some players of the national team like Captain Kouki in area 4 and the middle-blocker Koppanen. The trainer is Lauri Rantanen (till last year he was Assistant Coach) in place of the Italian Giolito (he was already athletic-trainer of Montichiari). He arrives to this match after winning against the Bulgarian team Dobrich (double victory 3-0 at home, 3-1 in the away match) and with the second place in championship, just one point behind VaLePa Sastamala – another Finnish team that participates in the tournament, the only one who was able to win against Hurrikaani in the Mestaruusliiga this season. The last match played dates December 28th: home victory 3-0 against Tiikerit. The most recent match wa played on December 28th: home victory (3-0) against Tiikerit. Hurrikaani Loimaa’s team: 1. Jesse Mantyla (l), 2. Johannes Laine (oh/l), 3. Akseli Haltia (s), 5. Henry Kartano (oh), 8. Karri Kutinlahti (c), 9. Tomi Mutka (oh), 10. Eero Eemeli Kouki (oh), 11. Harrison Peacock (s), 12. Tuomas Koppanen (c), 13. Mikko Oivanen (oh), 15. Matti Oivanen (c), 16. Luke Smith (oh). Coach Lauri Rantanen.
THE FORMULA 2017 CEV Cup sees 6 double matches (first and second round): 32nd – already played -, round of thirty-two, first knock-out round, quarters of finals, semifinals and final with direct elimination. The team that gains more points in the two matches overcomes. The points are assigned as in the championship: 3 for the 3-0 or 3-1 victory, 2 for the victory at the tie-break, 1 for the defeat at the tie-break (golden set at 15 if the number of the points is the same – like in the Playoff 12 of CEV Champions League). Who overcomes the first round will confront the winner of VaLePa Sastamala (Fin) – Gentofte Volley (Den) in the first knock-out round.
PRECEDENTS The one of tomorrow will be the first ever match between the two teams. Trentino volley has never played against a Finnish team in official events.
REFEREES The match will be directed by Jana Niklova, first Slovakian referee living who lives in Vienna (Austria), and by the Polish Tomasz Janik, second Warsaw referee. The two have never directed a Trentino Volley’s match.
RADIO AND INTERNET The match will be recounted with continuous live connections from Finland on Radio Dolomiti, broadcasting partner of Trentino Volley. The first connection will be at 5.25 p.m. On www.radiodolomiti.com you can find all the frequencies of the regional network and, at the same time, listen to the live match report, at the section “on air”. On the Internet, the website www.laola1.tv will broadcast the video and audio live streaming of the match; in order to follow the matches you have to go on http://www.laola1.tv/en-int/livestream/hurrikaani-loimaa-trentino-diatec-len a couple of minutes before the beginning of the match.
You can find point by point news on the official CEV website on http://cevlive.cev.lu/DV_LiveScore.aspx?ID=29190 that will give the live score, or on the Trentino’s Volley one at www.trentinovolley.it , that will offer the report set after set a couple of minutes after its conclusion. Live updates will be available on the yellow-blue social networks (www.trentinovolley.it/facebook e www.trentinovolley.it/twitter).
Trentino Volley Srl
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