Trento, 14 February 2025

SuperLega, on Saturday in Monza for the advance of the 20th round

The 20th round of the 2024/25 SuperLega Credem Banca regular season will take place this coming weekend. The men's team of Itas Trentino will be the protagonist of one of the two matches scheduled for Saturday, February 15, as they take the field at the Opiquad Arena in Monza to face Mint Vero Volley. Starting time is scheduled for 8:30 PM, with live broadcasts on RAI Sport, Radio Dolomiti, and live streaming on the OTT platform "VBTV".
HERE ITAS TRENTINO After the match in Chaumont on Tuesday evening, the European Champions are preparing for the second away game of the week, playing against Monza for the third time this season. The objective is to achieve another positive result to continue competing for the top spot in the standings while keeping Civitanova, who is six points behind, at a safe distance. In eight days, Civitanova will play at the ilT quotidiano Arena for the penultimate round of the championship.
"I expect a Monza team hungry for survival points, who will play this match with a lot of determination," said coach Fabio Soli in the pre-match briefing. "It will be necessary to approach the game with determination from the start, knowing that in these cases, the difference in the standings does not matter, but rather the will to win translated into quality of play. The focal point of the match will be our break point phase, which will need to put their play distribution in difficulty, considering that their setter Kreling is certainly one of the best in the world in his role."
The yellow and blue coach recovers the second setter Acquarone (who has recovered from the flu attack that prevented him from participating in the trip to France) but will still be without hitter Bristot. The team will complete preparations for the match with a training session in the early afternoon today at the ilT quotidiano Arena and then a final training session on the game field on Saturday morning. On this occasion, Trentino Volley will play its 35th official match of the season, the 1,079th in the history of its men's sector, and will seek its 437th regular season victory, having not lost since December 1 (1-3 to Civitanova). Subsequently, they have put together seven consecutive victories in the championship.
THE OPPONENTS The point earned by Taranto last Sunday in the home match against Cisterna has once again dropped Mint Vero Volley Monza to the last place in the standings. The team from Brianza had managed to leave the bottom spot the previous week thanks to a 3-1 home victory over Padova, but now, on the eve of the third-to-last round of the regular season, they find themselves back in the relegation zone. Therefore, they will face Itas Trentino with the urgent need to earn points to put pressure on the teams above them. The Lombard team's season has been plagued by many difficulties but also some notable high points, such as the tie-break victory against Civitanova on December 26 and the 3-1 win over Verona on November 17, showcasing the potential of a roster that has long had to do without its most important player, Osmany Juantorena. The Italian-Cuban hitter, a former standout with 193 official appearances and 2,662 points in the yellow-blue jersey between 2009 and 2013, winning four Club World Championships, two Champions Leagues, two Italian Championships, three Italian Cups, and one Italian Super Cup, has been available to coach Eccheli for several weeks now. However, he has not always found a place on the court, partly because the Vero Volley coach has often used the foreign pair Rohrs-Marttila in position 4, as happened last Sunday in Verona, inserting the young opposite Frascio in diagonal with Kreling. Ten of the thirteen points Monza has earned in the standings were obtained at the Opiquad Arena, thanks to four victories in nine matches.
THE BACKGROUND This will be the thirty-ninth official match between the two clubs, who in the last twelve months have already competed against each other nine times, in all types of possible Italian competitions: regular season (twice), Play Off Scudetto (Semifinals, five times), Coppa Italia (once) and Italian SuperCup (once, last 21st September in Florence). The overall balance is 31-7 for Trento, while that of the matches played only in this last year is 5-4 always for the Gialloblù, thanks to a 3-0 victory (25-15, 25-16, 25-20) in the first leg match played on 24th November at the ilT quotidiano Arena. The last previous match played in Brianza, however, was in favour of the hosts, who won 3-1 on 11st April in match 4 of the Play Off Semifinal. At the Opiquad Arena, Trentino Volleyball has won against Vero Volley in eleven of the fifteen matches played.
THE REFEREES The match will be refereed by Massimiliano Giardini (from Verona) and Mauro Carlo Goitre (from Turin), at fourth match of SuperLega refereed together in their career. Giardini is at his ninth Championship seasonal match and has previously refereed Trentino Volleyball on two occasions, both marked by a 3-1 victory: one at home against Modena on 20th October and one in Piacenza on 17th November; this will be his second ever Monza-Trento match (the previous one was on 27th October 2019, a 3-0 home victory for the Gialloblù). Goitre is in his 11th seasonal direction in SuperLega and will find Itas Trentino again after the 1-3 home defeat against Perugia (on 27th October) and the 3-1 home victory against Padova (on 27th November). He already has three Trento-Vero Volleyball matches on his record, always ending with a Gialloblù victory: on 23rd December 2018 (3-2 an away game), on 16th January 2022 (3-0 home match) and on 2nd April 2023 (3-0 in Brianza).
RADIO, INTERNET AND TV The meeting will be a global media event and therefore, will be broadcast live simultaneously on TV, radio and internet. On television, it will be broadcast by RAI Sport, channel 58 on the digital terrestrial platform, and also on the App “Rai Play”. The match will be reported live also by Radio Dolomiti, Trentino Volleyball’s media partner. Frequencies to listen to the regional network are available on the website www.radiodolomiti.com, where it is also possible to follow the radio news live also in streaming. Also confirmed is live video streaming on OTT platform, "VBTV"; there is a fee for the service. For more information about its use see the website https://it.volleyballworld.com/volleyball-tv-it.
A summary of the match will be broadcast on Monday, February 17th at 9:45 p.m., on RTTR channel, Trentino Volleyball's media partner. Moreover, detailed updates will be managed by the website of the Volleyball League Serie A (www.legavolley.it) and www.trentinovolley.it itself, and always active on gialloblù social networks (www.trentinovolley.it/facebook, www.trentinovolley.it/instagram and www.trentinovolley.it/twitter).

Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office