Trento, 14 February 2019

2019 CEV Cup, semifinal: match against the greek champions of the Olympiacos Piraeus

The qualification for the 2019 CEV Cup semifinals, played on Wednesday evening, allowed Trentino Volley to enter the top four teams of the competition. To go a step further to the Final it will be necessary to go back to a country already visited a couple of times in twelve years in the European Cups by the yellow-blue team.
In the fifth round of the final table (which proposes only single-elimination going and return matches) Trentino Itas will face the Greek Champions of Olympiacos Piraeus of Athens, who won the qualification this afternoon, excluding  the Bulgarians of the Burgas from the competition during the golden set. The going match will take place in Greece on February 26th, the return match on March 5th 2019. To know the time of the game will be necessary wait for a confirmation from the company, in accordance with the national federations and the CEV .
As happened in the 16th-finals, eighth-finals and quarterfinals, the team that will win obtain the highest number of points in the standings based on the two games played in which they are awarded – like in the SuperLega - 3 points for the 3-0 and 3-1 victory, 2 for the 3-2 victory and 1 for the 2-3 loss. The golden set (an extra-set to be played at the end of the secondo set) will be played only in the event of equal points

The opponents of the Trentino Itas
The main volleyball arena of Greece (where the Greek team is the current champion, having won his twenty-eighth championship in 2018), is the multisport club of Olimpiakos Piraeus (the ancient port of Athens), which has a very long tradition also for other sports such as football and basketball. The Greek team takes part in the 2019 CEV Cup, a trophy that already won twice (in 1996 and 2005), as a national champion; in his homeland he has also recently conquered his sixth League Cup and also boasts sixteen presences in the Greek Cup. However the main international result remains the one obtained in the Champions League 2002, when in the final in Opole (Poland) it lost against Lube Banca Marche Macerata of Ivan Milijkovic. Last season he missed the Challenge Cup victory, losing during the final against the Bunge Ravenna.
The team trained by the Spanish coach Munoz Benitez, already coach of the Iberian national team is full of talent and well-known names, like the Finnish setter Tervaportti (former Roeselare), of the opposite Canadian Schmitt (formerly Izmir), the spikers Rauwerdink (former Montichiari) and Aleksiev (former Corigliano and Monza) and the German middle-blocker Boehme (former San Giustino).
It qualified for the semi-finals, eliminating the Belarusians of Soligorsk in the round of 32, the Turks of the Istanbul BBSK in the round of 16 and the Bulgarians of the Burgas in the quarterfinals at the golden set. It leads the Greek league with a full score (36 points in thirteen games played).
The team challenge Trentino Volley in two previous Champions League officials, both finished at the tiebreak during the 2010 round phase. On the 2nd of December 2009 the Trentino team won in Athens, but on the 20th of January 2010 to win was instead the Greek team.

Usual starting six: Tervaportti (p), Schmitt (o), Rauwerdink-Aleksiev (s), Boehme-Petreas (c), Christofidelis (i)

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