ZAKSA Crushed the Big Cucine Lube Civitanova! Crazy match and tie-break

It was supposed to be a match for promotion to the quarter-finals, and it was a hit without any great importance for Grupa Azoty. Although it would be worth saying goodbye to the group stage victory against a big company, right? Coach Gheorghe Cretu and his players set such a task for themselves on Wednesday and they did it.

Great ZAKSA Kędzierzyn-Koźle! A great show of the Polish band in Italy

If someone is looking for the moment that would best reflect what the game was like, then he should watch the third set. Until then, it was 1: 1 – in the first set the players from Kędzierzyn used the advantage of three points at the end and won 25:22, and in the second set from 21:21 they scored four points and evened the game. But the third party belonged to the Polish team. And the momentum and spectacular action with which he won it could be used for several full meetings.

“The goats went all out” – wrote the official ZAKSA profile on Twitter. And right – it was a great show. Lube was leading 24:21 and had two set balls, but the Italians didn’t use any of them. And the Kędzierzyn crowd was playing as if in a trance. They scored four points in a row and got their own setball.

David Smith sent a firecracker from the serve, libero Lube, Fabio Balaso only gave the ball to ZAKSA to the other side, and there Kamil Semeniuk and Marcin Janusz made use of it. Semeniuk gave it to the quarterback, backed away, and Janusz played him on the left wing. The host cheated Ricardo Lucarelli in the block and Andrea Marchisio in defense and gave the Poles a 2-1 lead point throughout the game.

Semeniuk planted bombs, Huber blocked Simon, and the Lube players’ jaws dropped

The Polish team, however, did not finish the game in four sets, as in February last year, when they defeated Lube 3-1 in the first quarter-final match of the Champions League. In the fourth set, ZAKSA had only a good start. Then, from 17:16, the hosts did not lose the lead and finished with the score 25:21. As is often the case in ZAKSA’s matches with Lube, there was a tie-break.

And in it, as in the whole game: the middle Norbert Huber had fun on the block, stopping Robertlandy Simon, planted bombs from the service field and made aces, and Aleksander ¦liwka added more points on the wing. And on the other side, Ivan Zaitsev or Ricardo Lucarelli, at times, almost only made mistakes and admired the next actions of the European club champions, picking their jaws off the dance floor. And ZAKSA confirmed that it still is. Out of the first ten tie-break points, she allowed Lube to score just two. Knockout. It was the Gheorghe Cretu volleyball masterpiece.

Eventually, in the tie-break, ZAKSA crushed their rivals until 15:10 and won the match 3: 2. The Great Lube had to bow to the Poles one more time. Of course, Gianlorenzo Blengini’s team was already secured to the quarter-finals from first place in the group and only played for the seeding. But she did not get it and has to wait for the result of Thursday’s match between Berlin Recycling Volleys and Zenit Saint Petersburg. If Germany wins, Lube will be left without seed. And the Italian media wrote before the meeting that “the victory will avoid mishaps in the future”. Now they can’t be sure.

Promotion confirmed by victory. This victory is ZAKSA’s signal to the rivals

The meeting with Lube ZAKSA started just when the matter of her promotion to the quarter-finals of the Champions League was being settled. It turned out that the Kędzierzyn players left the group without playing in the sixth game, which was to decide whether they would be able to stay in the group of the top three teams from second places, which guaranteed promotion to the next phase. The rivals helped.

and made the Belgians lose their chances of overtaking ZAKSA after the Turks and dropped out of the Champions League. And the players from Kędzierzyn, although they played one more difficult match in Italy, could breathe a breath in their spirits, because the quarter-finals were sure for them.

Due to the certainty that the promotion to the quarter-finals could not be taken away from them, the players of ZAKSA played more relaxed, they looked more confident. And so they created another small volleyball holiday for themselves. Because that’s what defeating a might like Lube is always like. And they only patted the promotion – they confirmed that they fully deserved to enter the top eight of the next season in Europe. They were there for the third time in a row.

This victory is a signal to every rival ZAKSA may encounter in the next phase of the Champions League. The residents of Kędzierzyn-Koźle have a great desire to repeat the success of last season and they prove it more and more. They don’t seem weaker than a year ago. On Friday [losowanie o 13:00 – red.] it remains to be seen who will have to fear them in the quarter-finals.