Del Monte Italian Cup A1 Final Four
More interviews
While the hunt for the last tickets is getting fiercer, more protagonists have given their thoughts on the big event which is now just three days away:
Dragan Stankovic (Cucine Lube Banca Marche Macerata): “The semi-final against Perugia will be a difficult game against a team working on all cylinders. Some of their players are in the Serbian national team with me, I know them very well. We’ll need maximum focus like in every league game. We’re confident, we’ve done well recently, and we’re training with great intensity. We really want to do well”.
Andrea Giovi (Sir Safety Perugia): “Being in Bologna is already a great result. We’re happy to take part in this final four, but now that we’re here we’ll obviously try to go all the way. It will be tough against Macerata, they have proved to be the best team in the league so far. But it’s a do-or-die game, the pressure is on them, not on us, this is an advantage. We’ve seen in the league that if we play at 100% and they are not at their best, we can be competitive like it happened in the victory taken in our PalaEvangelisti, we had played at a great level. But it’s also true that, if they play at 100% and we don’t, we lose. We’ve done well of late, the victories have brought excitement, enthusiasm, and confidence in our abilities. And we can feel the excitement around us too. It’s nice to see people so passionate about volleyball again, even more for me as I was born and I grew up here. Hopefully, we’ll not disappoint the many fans that will follow us”.
Samuele Papi (Copra Elior Piacenza): “Our consistency has definitely been a good weapon for us this year but in the Italian Cup things are different. It’s in or out, anything can happen. We know it will be tough against Trento, they’ll have Sokolov back, it will be a battle. But we know we have what it takes to go through, and we’ll do everything possible to do so”.
Donald Suxho (Diatec Trentino): “Hopefully, we’ll finally have our full squad available for the final four. We have lost a few important players on the way in the last month, but we have made our way back to victories bit by bit and cured some of those injuries. In our last two league wins against Vibo Valentia and Città di Castello, we were united and determined again. Birarelli and Sokolov’s come-backs will really help us in the semi-final against Piacenza. This will inevitable be a very difficult game, and it would be even more so if we were not to have all our players fit”.
