Trento, 12 April 2023

Semifinal Series Play Off 2023 starts on Thursday at the BLM Group Arena (8.30 pm)

The semifinals Play Off Scudetto SuperLega Credem Banca 2023 start. Itas Trentino will compete against Gas Sales Bluenergy Piacenza in a best-of-five match, three of which will be played at home thanks to the best placement in the 2022/23 regular season rankings. Game 1 will be played on Thursday April 13th at 8.30 p.m. at the BLM Group Arena in Trento: live on RAI Sport HD, Radio Dolomiti and live streaming on the OTT platform Volleyball World Tv.
HERE ITAS TRENTINO After having secured the quarterfinals with Monza in just four matches and having taken full advantage of the ten days available to improve the physical and technical condition, the yellow-blue team is ready to come back on court to play against the Emilian team and try to get to the Final match.
“Having the chance to play a Play Off Semifinal of such a competitive championship as SuperLega, is a source of pride for all the four teams that achieved this goal, especially in this edition, in which we saw the high level of balance and uncertainty of the quarterfinals matches – explained the coach Angelo Lorenzetti during the presentation – . In this specific moment of the edition, we intend to be the main characters: we work the whole year to make that happen. The match against Piacenza shows an important gap of points between the two teams in the regular season rankings, which has not been confirmed by the direct season matches, each of them was in favour of the opponents. Gas Sales Bluenergy is a team who can play at a very high level and with a consistency and quality to which we want to get closer; I believe that my team will get through it, considered its value and its path. I hope it will be a long series, because both teams deserve to play lots of matches''.
Trentino’s coach can rely on its fourteen members, who will complete their training tonight and on Thursday morning at the BLM Group Arena. The Game 1 will be Trentino Volley forty-fourth seasonal match, the official 987th of its history. For three of them (Berger, Laurenzano and Pace) it will be the overall debut in a Play Off Scudetto semifinal; Kaziyski is the one who played the most matches with a Trentino jersey in this phase (30 matches in nine previous series).
FIFTEENTH SEMIFINAL PLAY OFF SCUDETTO FOR TRENTINO VOLLEY The fifteenth Scudetto Play Off semi-final in the history of Trentino Volleyball is about to start, the fourteenth in the last fifteen years. Via Trener’s club made it through the round eight times, thus gaining access to the final; the last time was in 2017, when it beat Perugia 3-2. Trento has played a total of 136 matches in the Play Off Scudetto so far, winning in 80 cases (26 of which were away matches) and losing in 56 (17 away from the BLM Group Arena). The player with the highest number of matches in the yellow-blue jersey is Matey Kaziyski, who reached 79 games thanks to his attendance token in Game 4 of the quarter-finals on April 2nd in Monza.
THE OPPONENTS Gas Sales Bluenergy gets on court as the one and only who already conquered a trophy in this season, the Italian Cup won a couple of months ago in Rome right against Trento. On Thursday will start the first series of the Play Off semifinal for a society who, for four years from now, already collected Copra Volley heritage, and who was able to win a championship in 2009 right against Trentino Volley. Fate clearly links Piacenza team to the yellow-blue club, which in the previous two Play Off editions (the only ones played so far under the Gas Sales badge) had always knocked the Emilian club out in the quarter-finals. The team coached by Massimo Botti (who stepped in for Bernardi in January, in the very last match played between the two teams at the BLM Group Arena) will try to turn the tide and, at the same time, confirm the positive trend in the current season compared to Itas Trentino, defeated three times in as many matches played. In order to do that, it will rely on the Brazilian hitter-spikers Leal and Lucarelli (154 points in two of the five matches of the series played against Modena, comeback-win in the quarterfinals), the middle blocker Simon (already a Trentino opponent in the last three Play Off edition with Civitanova jersey) and the French setter Brizard.
THE BACKGROUND Piacenza is Trentino Volley’s third most faced opponent: 68 times in total (the tally is 46-22), including the thirteen matches of championship final in the Play Off 2008 (yellow-blue team’s victory for 2-1), 2009 (Piacenza’s victory for 2-3) and 2013 (Trentino’s victory for 3-2) and the ten in the quarterfinals 2005 (Piacenza’s victory for 2-3), 2021 (Trentino success for 2-0) and 2022 (Trento, 2-1). Never before did the two Clubs faced each other in the second to last phase of the scoreboard; the only semifinal was the one of Italian Cup 2014 edition (1-3 for Piacenza, who then won the trophy). Apart from the 2021 edition, each time the two teams faced each other in the Play Offs, a play-off match was always needed to determine the winner. Gas Sales Bluenergy has three victories in the ongoing season, with a 3-1 win at the PalaBanca on October 16th, 3-0 in Rome in the Italian Cup Final (February 27th) and 3-1 at the BLM Group Arena on January 8th in the only match of the current year played at the yellow-blue home.
THE SERIES As well as the Finals, the semifinals are played following the best-of-five set format. The series is carried out on a potential length of thirteen days: after game 1, the team will move to Piacenza for game 2 scheduled for Sunday 16th at 6 p.m., while game 3 will be played again at the BLM Group Arena on Wednesday April 19th (at 8.30 p.m.). Games 4 and 5 will be played, if necessary, on Saturday April 22nd at PalaBanca (temporary time 8.30 p.m.) and then on Tuesday 25th at 6 p.m. in Trento. Whoever passes the round will face the winner of Civitanova-Milano in the final, that takes place on Thursday at the same time.
THE REFEREES The match will be directed by Dominga Lot (from Santa Lucia di Piave – Treviso, role-referee since 2010 and international since 2017) and Stefano Cesare (from Rome, in the top category since 1999 and international since 2010). For Lot it will be the thirteenth seasonal match in the SuperLega; the most recent match with the yellow-blue team is oddly enough a match with Piacenza, lost 1-3 in Emilia on October 16th 2022. For Cesare it is the seventeenth match in the top series of this season; the last with the Trento team goes back to February 5th in Taranto (win for 3-0).
TV, RADIO AND INTERNET This match will be a global media event, with a live on TV, radio and the Internet. On TV it will be broadcast by RAI Sport HD, a channel on the digital terrestrial platform (number 58).
As always, live reporting will be provided on Radio Dolomiti, the team's media partner. The frequencies to listen to the regional network are available on the website www.radiodolomiti.com, where it will also be possible to follow the live radio report on streaming.
Live video streaming on the OTT platform 'Volleyball World TV' is also confirmed; the service is for a fee. More information on how to use it can be found at www.welcome.volleyballworld.tv/faq-it.
On TV a summary of the match will also be broadcast on Friday 14 March at 4.30 pm on RTTR - Trentino Volleyball's partner TV.
On the Internet, point-to-point updates will be provided by the Lega Pallavolo Serie A website (www.legavolley.it) and by www.trentinovolley.it, and will also be active on the yellow-blue team social networks (www.trentinovolley.it/facebook, www.trentinovolley.it/instagram and www.trentinovolley.it/twitter).
TICKETS This match is only included in the ‘Full’ subscription, while those who have the ‘standard’ one can buy the ticket whenever they want, also on the Internet by clicking on https://trentinovolley.vivaticket.it/it/event/semifinale-play-off-s1/205731. The tickets will then be available on Thursday evening at the BLM Group Arena cash desks, which will be open from 7.15 p.m. (the same time at which the arena doors will also open).

Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office