Trento, 17 April 2020

Champions League, 4 years ago the Final vs Kazan. Djuric: "We came close to winning it"

April 17, 2016 - April 17, 2020: our team's calendar reminds us that just today, four years ago, at the Tauron Arena in Krakow Trentino Volley played its fourth CEV Champions League final.
After the first three consecutive final victories between 2009 and 2011, in Poland our club went very close to its fourth success, leaving the cup to Zenit Kazan only at the tie break, after a battle of more than two hours ended with scores of 25-23, 25-22, 17-25, 25-27, 13-15.
Before conceding the trophy to the opponents and despite the precarious physical conditions (Nelli unavailable, Lanza and Djuric not at their best due to physical problems), Giannelli and his team-mates managed to get even on 2-0, confirming to play a great volleyball that had allowed the day before to beat Civitanova in the semi-finals in just three sets. 
In the excited final of the match, the team then coached by Stoytchev also had the opportunity to extend the match to the advantages of the fifth set on the score of 13-14 for the Russian team, but Urnaut did not succeed in scoring the attacking spike, which Leon (later named MVP) did instead. 
The disappointment for the defeat in the final rush did not, however, wipe out the pride of Trentino for having returned to a step away from winning the top continental club tournament against that club (Zenit Kazan), which took up the legacy of Trentino Volleyball in terms of consecutive trophy victories.
In the current yellow and blue roster there are still three players of the team that won the silver medal at the Tauron Arena: the team's leader Simone Giannelli, the second free Carlo De Angelis and the opposite player Mitar Djuric, who told today for the CEV YouTube channel his memories of that historic match through a video made in his home in Trento. "I don't think that many people expected that we could reach the final, let alone think of a 2-0 advantage in the final against a team much stronger and more experienced than ours as Zenit Kazan was at the time - explained Djuric, who scored 17 personal points in that occasion - . We fought until the last moment, also facing several physical problems, but beyond the defeat I will never forget the fighting spirit that we showed and the desire not to give up that weekend in Krakow. We were like brothers on the field and that's why we managed to overcome many obstacles along the way. It was a sensational achievement; that silver medal gave us a lot of emotions, made us regret the defeat, but gave us a lot of pride".
In that historical period Trentino Volley had been and will often be the protagonist of European Cup Finals, so much so that four of them will be played in five seasons between 2015 and 2019: three in the CEV Cup and one in the Champions League. Only in 2018 it didn't play a Final Cup, being eliminated in the Champions Quarter Finals by Lube. 

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