Trento, 20 November 2024

2025 CEV Cup, in the round of 16 against the portuguese club Benfica

The qualification for the round of 16 of the 2025 CEV Cup, which was played this evening at ilT quotidiano Arena, allowed Trentino Volley team to be part of the top 20 teams in the competition. The next step  towards the Play-Offs will be against a Portuguese team,  one of the few European nations against which the gialloblù had not collected even a single precedent in its twenty-four-year history. In the third part of the final draw (which offers up to the final only double knockout first-leg and return matches) Trentino Itas will in fact face Sport Lisboa e Benfica, which won as the gialloblù the qualification already on Tuesday night, ousting the Slovenian team of Calcit Kamnik from the competition. The first leg match will be played in the Lusitanian capital between December 3rd and 5th, whereas the return match will be in Italy between December 17th and 19th, 2024. The final date and time of the game will have to be confirmed by each company, in agreement with the respective national federations and the CEV.
As happened in the round of 32, the team that has obtained the highest number of points in the standings, drawn up based on the two matches played, will pass the round. In these matches, as for the SuperLega championship, 3 points are awarded for a 3-0 or 3-1 victory, 2 for a 3-2 victory and 1 for a 2-3 defeat. The golden set (partial tiebreak to be played until the 15th at the end of the second match) will be played only in case of a tie on points.

The identikit of Sport Lisboa e Benfica Club
A formation that refers directly to Polisportiva Benfica, which also includes the glorious football team and many other sports such as handball, basketball, women's volleyball and hockey. Since five years, it is the undisputed leader of the Primeira Divisão, the Portuguese national championship, which has won a total of twelve times; for this reason it took the first qualifying round in September to play the Champions League for the seventh time (also played last season, where it stopped at the group stage against Piacenza), where, however, it was eliminated by Las Palmas in the golden set. The best European result in its history is the second place overall in 2015 CEV Cup, achieved by losing the Final against Novi Sad.
The roster available to coach Marcel Matz can count on a few names already known to volleyball fans, such as Banderò, the Brazilian opposite spiker (formerly in Italy with the jersey of Vibo Valentia, Corigliano and Civita Castellana) and Wohlfahrtstätter, the Austrian middle blocker (ex Vienna), who now plays diagonally to the Canadian Eshenko. The setter is the Portuguese Da Silvia Violas (the only Lusitanian player in the sextet together with the libero Casas), while in position 4 there are the Cuban Nivaldo Nadhir and the Brazilian Ryuma Oto Aleixo. In the roster there is also space for a Polish opposite spiker (Godlewski) and two other Brazilians: the hitter spiker Ventura Machado and the 3rd position Hoffmand from Cunda. In the top Portuguese championship, he is currently second in the standings, only one point behind leading Sporting (seven wins in eight matches).

Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office