Trento, 07 January 2023

Superlega, on Sunday at BLM Group Arena the first match of 2023

The year 2023 opens for Itas Trentino with a match for the regular season of the SuperLega Credem Banca at the BLM Group Arena. Indeed, on Sunday, January 8th at 3:30 p.m. the time will come for the direct match for the fourth place in the rankings against Gas Sales Bluenergy Piacenza valid for the fourteenth round. Live on Radio Dolomiti and live streaming on the OTT Volleyball World Tv platform.
HERE ITAS TRENTINO After having closed in the best way possible the 2022, the yellow-blue lineup will seek confirmations and another positive result in SuperLega, to extend the positive streak in the championship and try to further distance a direct pursuer, who chases Itas Trentino three lengths behind in the standings.
"It is an important game for several reasons, first and foremost for the standings, and we are happy to be able to face it in front of our public, which in the last previous game on Boxing Day gave us a wonderful atmosphere and a great push to center the victory over Verona," explained coach Angelo Lorenzetti, “Piacenza has recently changed coach, but it also won during an away match the qualification to the Final Four of the Coppa Italia; so I am sure that, regardless of what set-up it will use on the court, it will come to Trento full of energies, to play a great game. For our part, we have tried to make good use of the break at New Year's Day, both to recover energy and also to prepare ourselves from a technical point of view for a month of January to be played almost entirely on the road and which represents a sort of watershed for our run in the regular season and Champions League. We want to start 2023 on the right foot."
Itas Trentino will complete its match preparation in the coming hours, holding a technical session at the BLM Group Arena this afternoon for what will be the last practice before the game. The yellow-blue coach can count on the entire roster at his disposal; even Oreste Cavuto during the last week started working with the group again after his long stop due to an abdominal injury. On this occasion Trentino Volley will play the 25th official match of the season, the 968th ever and will go in search of success number 396 in its regular season history. In front of its own public the yellow-blue club has already played 443 matches, winning 350 of them. In seventeen instances (out of twenty-two) the Trener Street club happened to start a new calendar year with a victory: nine of them within the home turfs of the BLM Group Arena. In 2010 the first match after New Year's Day was played against Piacenza itself (overcome 3-2 on January 3rd).
THE OPPONENTS Gas Sales Bluenergy comes to Trento to start a new chapter of its season. In fact, the final part of 2022 has seen the Emilians change their technical guide; after the victory in Verona in the Coppa Italia quarterfinals (a result that guaranteed qualification to the Final Four for the second consecutive year), the club decided to relieve coach Lorenzo Bernardi of his duties, promoting his second Massimo Botti (on the white-red bench for quite some time already and protagonist as head coach of the promotion from Serie A2 in 2019). Sunday's will therefore be his first game as coach in SuperLega, an appointment in which he will inevitably have to deal with the infirmary. If in fact the central player Alonso is fully recovered, in doubt there is the presence of Leal while the former on duty Lucarelli (recently operated on the third finger of his right hand injured before Christmas) will definitely not be in the match. In the first thirteen days Piacenza has shown all its quality in batting (only Perugia has scored more ace - 89 to 88), thanks to great interpreters of the fundamental as Romanò (second for direct points and seventh bomber) and the same Lucarelli, and at the wall (sixth for direct blocks in the ranking led by Trento), in which obviously the big voice is especially the central Simon. On the road in this regular season Gas Sales Bluenergy has so far won in Verona, Padua, Siena, Taranto and Milan, getting more than half of the points it can boast in the standings (14 out of 22).
THE BACKGROUND The confrontation with Piacenza has become over time a great classic of Italian men's volleyball, not only because of the conspicuous number of matches played, which place the team from the Emilian city as the third most frequently faced opponent by Trentino Volley (66, ahead of it there are only Civitanova with 91 and Modena with 81). In fact, the challenge has featured as many as three Scudetto finals (2008, 2009, and 2013) and is back on the map in the Italian top league in the 2019/20 season after only one season of absence: the 2018/19 season, in which the biancorossa square had to deal with a restart from the A2 Series. The balance is clearly in favor of Trentino Volley by 46-20, also thanks to the long string imposed in recent years; since Piacenza has returned to the highest national championship (2019/20 season) it has in fact won only twice in twelve official matches: the last two played within the friendly walls of the PalaBanca (at the tie break on April 3rd, 2022 in Game 2 of the Play Off Scudetto quarterfinals and 3-1 in the first leg of this regular season, on October 16th, 2022). The BLM Group Arena in the last twelve years has, by the way, always turned out to be an impregnable fortress for the opponents; to find a Piacenza success in the Street Fersina facility, we even have to go back to May 17th, 2009 (3-2 in Game 5 of the Playoff Final, resulting in the Scudetto victory), when Angelo Lorenzetti sat on the bench of the white-red. Overall, Trento has won thirty of the thirty-five previous official matches played against Piacenza within its home walls, including three from the previous season: 3-1 on November 18th, 2021 (regular season) and 3-0 on March 26th, 2022 (Game 1 of the Playoff quarterfinals) and April 10th, 2022 (Game 3 of the Playoff quarterfinals).
THE REFEREES The match will be managed by Marco Zavater (from  Rome, in Serie A since 2008) and by Rocco Brancati (from Città di Castello - Perugia, in Serie A since 2015), in their eighth and sixth SuperLega matches of their season, respectively. The last precedent with Trentino Volley for Zavater dates back to October 26th in the 3-1 win in Modena, while for Brancati the most recent match curiously refers to a home match with Piacenza, won 3-0 last 26th in Game 1 of the Scudetto Play Off quarterfinals.
RADIO, INTERNET AND TV The match will be reported live by Radio Dolomiti, media partner of Trentino Volley. Frequencies to listen to the regional network can be found at www.radiodolomiti.com, where it will also be possible to follow the radio report in live streaming.  The live video streaming will also be available on the OTT platform "Volleyball World TV", the service is pay-per-view. For further information on the use of the same consult www.welcome.volleyballworld.tv/faq-it.  On TV, the match recap will be aired on Monday, January 9th at 9:40 p.m., on RTTR - partner TV of Trentino Volley. Eventually, on the Internet point-to-point updates will be edited by the website of the Italian Volley League Serie A (www.legavolley.it), by www.trentinovolley.it itself and will always be active on the yellow-blue’s team social networks (www.trentinovolley.it/facebook and
www.trentinovolley.it/twitter).
BOX OFFICE The match is included in both types of season tickets offered for this season by Trentino Volley (full and basic). It is still possible to purchase tickets for the single match at any time on the Internet by clicking https://trentinovolley.vivaticket.it/it/event/itas-trentino-piacenza/199821. The vouchers will be also available on Saturday at the BLM Group Arena ticket offices, which will be operative starting at 2:15 p.m., the same time the arena entrances will also open.The use of the mask is not mandatory to enter the stadium.

Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office