Trento, 02 December 2023

SuperLega, the remake of the Scudetto Final in Civitanova on Sunday for round 8

The eighth round of the regular season SuperLega Credem Banca 2023/24 is being played this weekend. Itas Trentino men's team will be away, visiting Cucine Lube on Sunday December 3rd; at the Eurosuole Forum in Civitanova Marche, kick-off scheduled for 6 p.m. Live broadcast on Radio Dolomiti and live streaming on the OTT Volleyball World Tv platform.
HERE ITAS TRENTINO The Yellow-blue team returns to the Marche region for the first time with the scudetto on their chest, ready to live the remake of the Play Off Final played last May and determined to legitimise their excellent position in the standings to preserve their unbeaten league title. Wednesday night's victory in Tours offered further conviction to the group, which on Sunday will be called to a new test, even more difficult than the previous one.
"Facing Lube at the Eurosuole Forum is always a topical and challenging moment in any team's regular season journey - underlined coach Fabio Soli at the presentation of the match. Sunday's match  - , is even more so, because it comes after an away win in the Champions League for both teams, a result that will make the two teams come to the appointment even more charged and determined to continue the excellent results. For us it is also an opportunity to verify, against a top team, the progress made in the last period in terms of effectiveness and continuity of play. We will face a team that has many different skills at its disposal, that knows how to exploit them well, and that plays a concrete and unpredictable volleyball; I therefore expect a tight match, full of emotional content, to be lived with the awareness of how nice it is to be part of a classic of our volleyball like this one".
The team will reach Civitanova Marche in the early evening today, after the morning training session at the T Quotidiano Arena and the subsequent coach transfer with all fourteen players of the squad. It will be the 546th official away match in the history of the men's sector of Trentino Volleyball, the eleventh of the season, and will see the Yellow-blue team go in search of the 701st victory ever out of 1,007 matches played.
THE OPPONENTS Fresh off five consecutive victories (three in the league and two in the Champions League - the last one on Thursday evening in Prague), Cucine Lube Civitanova await the visit of the Italian champions to try and extend their winning streak even further, and thus secure another home victory against a top-ranked team. The team led by Gianlorenzo Blengini has been the only one able to stop Perugia (defeated at the tie break on 5 November at the Eurosuole Forum), and has always been competitive. Compared to the previous season, the only real new name is that of Turkish opposite spiker Lagumdzija, who immediately fit perfectly into the group, as the 125 points scored in the first seven days (the third highest scorer in the tournament) well illustrate. The Marchigiani have plenty of alternatives on the high ball (Nikolov, Yant, Bottolo and Zaytsev) and can change face at any time, offering few points of reference to opponents. Among their five victories in seven matches, the two 3-0 away wins over Padova and Modena should also be emphasised.
BACKGROUND The match between Trentino Volley and Cucine Lube has now become a must in modern men's volleyball, having featured no fewer than nine finals of all types: in addition to last May's, there are two Play Off finals (2012 and 2017), three Coppa Italia finals (2012, 2013 and 2017), two Supercoppa finals (2009 and 2013) and one World Cup final (2018). Civitanova is, together with Modena, the only opponent that the club of via Trener has always faced in all its two twenty-three seasons of activity and it is the one with which it boasts the highest number of previous official matches: 95 (Modena is second with 81). The balance is in favour of the Marches by 53-42, but Trento has won four of the last six challenges, including the last regular season match played in Civitanova ( January 21st 2023, 3-1 victory). Trentino Volleyball has managed to prevail in twelve of the forty-one matches played at home by their opponents, conquering the Eurosuole Forum in three of the last ten circumstances, also taking into account the victories in the Play Off on March 28th 2021 and April 14th 2022. The tie break has been the solution in no less than thirty-five matches; by far the most frequently occurring result (36% of cases) and the one that also materialised in the penultimate most recent precedent in Le Marche (May 4th).
THE REFEREES The match will be directed by Mauro Goitre (from Turin, in the maximum series since 2008 and international since 2016) and Armando Simbari (from Milan, in the role since 2007), respectively in their fourth and fifth matches of the season in SuperLega Credem Banca. Trentino Volleyball's last previous meeting with the Piedmontese whistle related to a match against Civitanova, which Simbari officiated together with (a 3-0 home win on 7 May 2023 in Game 3 of the Scudetto Final), but the most recent meeting for the Milanese whistleblower was on the first day of the current championship (22 October, a tie-break victory in Cisterna).
RADIO, INTERNET AND TV The match will be reported live by Radio Dolomiti, Trentino Volleyball's media partner. The frequencies to listen to the regional network can be found on the website www.radiodolomiti.com, where it will also be possible to follow the live radio commentary in streaming.
Live video streaming on the OTT platform 'Volleyball World TV' is also confirmed; the service is chargeable. More information on how to use it can be found at https://it.volleyballworld.com/volleyball-tv-it .
On television a summary will be aired on Friday 4 December at 21.50, on RTTR - Trentino Volleyball's media partner.
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 social networks (www.trentinovolley.it/facebook, www.trentinovolley.it/instagram and www.trentinovolley.it/twitter).

Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office