Trento, 25 February 2019

The first round of 2019 CEV Cup Semifinals on Tuesday evening

The match will be played in Greece on Tuesday the 26th of February. After eliminating Losanna in the round of thirty-two, Haching in the round of sixteen, Amriswil in the quarterfinals, Trentino-Itas faces Olympicus Piraeus in the penultimate double round of the European competition. The beginning of the match is scheduled at 6.00 p.m (Italian time) at Melina Merkouri in Atens: live on Radio Dolomiti and live streaming on DAZN.
HERE ITAS TRENTINO Confirmed the second place in the SuperLega ranking thanks to Saturday's 3-0 against Padova, the World Champions return to play in the European field in order to obtain a positive result in Greece and make a first important step towards the possible final. The second match (and therefore also the possible golden set) offers a small advantage, but to be able to take advantage of it, it will still be necessary to make a good impression also in Greece.
“As opposed to what happens in this period in the league, in Athens we will face the first of two acts "inside" or "outside" and we will have to be good at immediately falling into the spirit of this type of competition in order to be able to win something good – declared Angelo Lorenzetti - . CEV Cup is not the Champions League but at this point there are no weak teams on the board. The Olympiacos, moreover, is a technically skilled team with an efficient side-out because inspired by a talented setter like Tervaportti. Even when they are in trouble in reception, they manage to score. In the break point phase, however, the Greeks have qualities in attack and important heights that they can exploit properly”.
The trainer of Trentino Volley can count on the whole roster who have trained for the last time before playing on Sunday night.
THIRD AWAY GAME IN GREECE, THE SECOND ONE IN ATHENS. The one that started this morning and will end in the early afternoon on Wednesday (the return to Trento is in fact scheduled around 2.00 pm on 27th February) is the third trip to Greece in the history of Trentino Volley. Trentino Volley had already played in this country on December 2nd 2009 in Athens in the debut of the second participation in CEV Champions League, conquering the Olympiacos field for 3-2, and then also on 18th November 2015 in Thessaloniki (victory for 3-1 vs Paok). In total, the company has already faced sixty European trips (seventeen only in the CEV Cup), winning forty-eight times. Athens will be the 154th international match of the history of Trentino Volley: 125 victories, 28 defeats.
THE OPPONENTS. Trentino Itas visits the team that dominates the Greek scene. The Olympiacos Piraeus is indeed the reigning national champion. The white-red formation belongs to the Olympiacos Piraeus sports centre (the ancient port of Athens), which boasts very long traditions also concerning other important disciplines such as football and basketball. CEV Cup participates in the 2019 edition with a particularly important past in this tournament, having won it twice already (in 1996 and 2005).
The greater international result however remains the one obtained in the Champions League 2002, when in Opole (Poland) lost against Lube Banca Marche Macerata in the final. Last season it lost against an Italian team, the Bunge Ravenna, in the Challenge Cup victory. The team of the Spanish coach Munoz Benitez, in the past coach of the Iberian national team and on the bench of Izmir and Ankara, has manu well-known names, like that of the Finnish setter Tervaportti (ex Roeselare), of the Canadian opposite Schmitt (ex Izmir) and spiker Rauwerdink (ex Montichiari) and Aleksiev (ex Corigliano and Monza). The team qualified for the semi-finals by 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. Olympiacos Piraeus roster: 1. Konstantinos Christofidelis (l), 2. Paraskevas Tselios (c), 3. Nikos Zoupani (s), 4. Nikolaos Smaragdis (c), 5. Konstantinos Stivachtis (p), 6. Georgios Stefanou (l), 7. Georgios Petreas (c), 8. Marcus Boehme (c), 9. Theologos-Christos Daridis (l), 10. Andreas Andreadis (c), 12. Gavin Schmitt (o), 14. Eemi Tervaportti (p), 15. Todor Aleksiev (s), 17. Rafail Koumentakis (s), 18. Jeroen Rauwerdink (s).  Allenatore Fernando Munoz Benitez.
THE FORMULA AND THE OTHER SEMIFINAL The 2019 CEV Cup provide for six double rounds (going and return) of games (thirty-second, sixteenth, eighth, quarterfinals - already played -, semifinals and finals) with a single elimination: the team that gets the most points in the two matches goes on un the tounament: 3 for a 3-0 or 3-1 win, 2 for a tie-break victory, 1 for a tie-break defeat (golden set to 15 in the event of equal points - same system as the 12 CEV Champions League Playoffs). Tuesday at 1pm (Italian time zone) in Russia will be play the other semi-final Kuzbass Kemerovo-Galatasaray Istanbul. The return matches will be play on Tuesday 5 March (at 5 pm the one in Turkey, at 8.30 pm the one in Trento).
PRECEDENTS The two society has played 2 matches in the 2010 edition of CEV Champions League (won by Trentino Volley): on 2nd of December 2009 the match of Athens won by the yellow blue team with the score 3-2 (26-28 , 19-25, 25-18, 25-22, 15-9) and 20th of January 2010 in the match played in Trento and won by the guests again at the tie break (23-25, 25-14, 21-25, 13- 15). The one on Tuesday will be the seventh absolute match of Trentino Volley against a Greek team, considering also the 3-1 victory on the Patras of 13th of November 2004 in Odense (Denmark - Cev Cup), the success on the Iraqi Thessaloniki in the final of the CEV Indesit Champions League 2009 in Prague and the two victories obtained on the Paok Thessaloniki (3-1 18th November 2015 and 3-0 on 19th January 2016) in the 2016 CEV Champions League.
THE REFEREES The match will be directed by the English Nicholas Heckford, from London, and Rudina Omari, from Istanbul. They have never arbitratedd Trentino Volley befor.
RADIO ED INTERNET The match will be transmitted by Radio Dolomiti, Trentino Volley's network partner at 5:55pm by clicking on “on air” on the website www.radiodolomiti.com.
I twill be possible to follow the match live streaming and on demand on DAZN, avaiable on cui Smart TV, PC, smartphone, tablet e game console. DAZN requires a registration offers a free month. At the end of the first month the service becomes on payment but you can cancel you registration in any moment. On the internet all the news will be offered by the CEV website (https://cevlive.cev.eu/DV_LiveScore.aspx?ID=31578), and the website of Trentino Volley www.trentinovolley.it and they will be always on the yellow-blue social network  (www.trentinovolley.it/facebook and www.trentinovolley.it/twitter).

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