Trento, 22 January 2020

Thursday in Milan the quarter finals of Coppa Italia 2020

The four quarter-finals of the 42nd edition of the Del Monte® Coppa Italia will be played between today and Thursday evening. Itas Trentino will make its seasonal debut in the competition away from home, facing Allianz Powervolley Milano at the Allianz Cloud (formerly PalaLido) in Milan on January 23rd: a knockout match. The winning tea, will qualify for the Final Four, scheduled for the weekend of February 22 -23, 2020 in Bologna. The start will begin at 8:45 p.m. and will be transmitted live on RAI Sport + and Radio Dolomiti.
QUI ITAS TRENTINO The gialloblù line-up faces the first match with no return in 2020, useful to reach one of the main seasonal goals (the qualification to the Italian Cup semifinal). For once they will have to do so without being able to take advantage of the field factor at this stage of the competition, but the two three-point victpries obtained during the previous week encourage them to play with optimism.
"It will be a hard match" - said the coach of Trentino Volley Angelo Lorenzetti - . Trento is used to qualify for the Final Four but in this case it will be more complicated, partly because the match will be not in our city and partly because we are going to face stroong opponents: this team found further confidence in itself also thanks to the important results obtained in the last period. we can see this through the high number of victories obtained in SuperLega. We know it won't be easy to win, but we want to believe that we can do it this time as well".
Itas Trentino will be present at this event with all of its roster: all thirteen players of the squad are regularly available and will reach Milan already in the evening after training in the eve at the BLM Group Arena. Among the Trentino players, the one who has played the most editions of the Italian Cup is Luca Vettori, who will start his eighth participation in the top national trophy, having already put in his palmares 3 consecutive successes between 2014 and 2016. Only for Sosa Sierra this is the first time.
THE HISTORY OF TRENTINO VOLLEY IN COPPA ITALIA The one that will be inaugurated in Milan will be the 18th participation in the quarter finals of the Italian Cup in twenty seasons of activity for Trentino Volley, that didn't play in the debut season in A1 (2000/01, because of their elimination in the quarter finals against Cuneo), and in the last one by Lattari (2006/07). On twelve occasions Trentino Volley passed the quarter-finals, reaching the Final Four; in the last one it has been eliminated in Verona with 3-0. They won for 3 times: 31 January 2010 in Montecatini Terme (3-1 over Cuneo in the final), 19 February 2012 at the PalaLottomatica in Rome (3-2 on the Lube) and 30 December 2012 (3-1 win on the Lube at the Assago Forum. They played seven finals, including those lost in Cuneo (2010/11), Modena (2014/15 and 2015/16) and Civitanova (2016/17). In the other five participations, the elimination happened in the quarter of finals: in 2002/03 against Macerata, in 2003/04 against Cuneo, in 2004/05, in 2007/08 and in 2008/09 against Treviso.
THE OPPONENTS this year we can see that Allianz Milano grows more and more. After having obtained the fourth place in the standings at the end of the first round, (a position that will allow it to play this match in front of its audience), the Milan team has in fact put together eight points out of the nine available in the following matches, undermining Cucine Lube victory by reaching six consecutive victories. This is a team stronger than yesterday. The Coach Roberto Piazza will be able to count not only on an Abdel-Aziz in a moment of extraordinary form (the Dutch opponent is the best scorer and aceman of this SuperLega), but also on the reintegration in the squad of the central Alletti, which will eventually allow him to return to play in a traditional way, without having to ask Gironi and Clevenot to take care of the center of the net. A test that was brilliantly completed, however. The regular season performance standings further certify the great season of Milano, which also brought Kozamernik to the first places in the individual block efficiency ranking (better than him only Lisinac) and Clevenot in the spikers' efficiency ranking (third, behind Bednorz and Leon).
THE 2020 DEL MONTE® COPPA ITALIA FORMAT This evening and Thursday the quarter finals will be played, knockout matches with defined combinations thanks to the ranking of the first leg of the regular season SuperLega Credem Banca. Milano-Trento is the only match to be played on January 23rd; the others will be played simultaneously tonight: Perugia-Padova, Civitanova-Monza and Modena-Ravenna at 8.30 pm. The Final Four will take place over the weekend of February 22nd and 23rd at the Unipol Arena in Bologna: on Saturday 22nd the semi-finals (the winner of the quarter-finals at the PalaLido will face whoever wins between Lube and Vero Volley Monza). On Sunday February 22nd the final will take place at 6 pm.
PREVIOUS ENCOUNTERS For the first time in their history, Trentino Volley and Powervolley Milano face each other in the Coppa Italia; the challenges so far have only ever been characterized by regular season matches, twelve in total. The face-off outcome is 10-1 for our team, with the only victory of the Lombards referring to a match played in Trento on 15 October 2017 (2-3 in the name of Abdel-Aziz mvp with 28 points). The most recent match is instead dated November 17 at the PalaLido (sixth round of the current championship): 3-1 victory for Lorenzetti's team (scores of 18-25, 26-24, 25-18, 25-21) with Russell mvp. The three home matches in Milan prior to that match were played at the PalaYamamay in Busto Arsizio, always ended with a win clinched by Trentino Volley: 3 March 2019 for 3-1, 5 February 2017 for 3-0 and 30 December 2017 for 3-2. The other matches were played respectively on 8 February 2015 at the Assago Forum and on 5 December 2015 at the PalaBorsani in Castellanza.
REFEREES Marco Zavater (from Rome, in Serie A since 2008) and Roberto Boris (from Vigevano - Pavia, in Serie A since 1997 and international since 2010) will referee the match. Zavater is in his eighth direction of the season; he also referred one Trentino Volley match, on the occasion of the 3-1 win in Reggio Calabria on November 6th versus Callipo Calabria Tuna. For Boris, it's his ninth match in the seans, his second refereed match was a Trentino Volley match, the home defeat in four sets against Civitanova (December 22).
TV, RADIO AND INTERNET COVERAGE: The match will be a global media event, as it will be live on TV, radio and the internet. It will be broadcast by RAI Sport +, a channel available both on DTT (HD channel 57, SD channel 58) and on Sky (channel 227), with commentary by Maurizio Colantoni and Lorenzo Bernardi; the match will also be broadcast on the internet in streaming through the RaiPlay app and will have a continental visibility (twelve connected countries) thanks to the live programmes of Sportklub (Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro), Match TV (Russia), Polsat (Poland), BTV (Bulgaria), DSmart (Turkey), as well as the main world betting sites served by the SportRadar corporation. As always, there will be direct and complete coverage of Radio Dolomiti, Trentino Volley's media partner, starting at 8.45 pm. All the broadcasting frequencies for listening to the regional network are available on the website www.radiodolomiti.com, in which you can listen to the radio commentary in streaming, by accessing the "On Air" section.
On TV, the full deferred match will be broadcast on Saturday, January 25th at 8:30 pm, on RTTR - tv partner of Trentino Volley. On the internet, point to point updates will be made by the website of the Lega Pallavolo Serie A (www.legavolley.it) and by our website www.trentinovolley.it and we will always keep you up to date through our social media (www.trentinovolley.it/facebook www.trentinovolley.it/instagram and www.trentinovolley.it/twitter).

Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office