The five groups of the Main Phase of the 2024 CEV Volleyball Champions League were made official this morning in Luxembourg at the European Broadcasting Center. Trentino Itas will begin its thirteenth participation in the top continental tournament for clubs, already won three times, in Pool B, which includes the Poles from Rzeszow, the French from Tours and the Slovenians from Ljubljana.
The group stage includes a total of six matches divided between the first and second round, will begin on 22 November 2023 and end on 17 January 2024. The top two in each group and the best third in each group will qualify for the Play Offs; the five second-placed teams and the best third-placed team will play the round of 16 with two-way matches (30 January and 8 February), which qualify three teams for the quarter-finals, to which the first-placed teams of each Pool automatically access.
This, in detail, is the path that will await Trentino Itas in Pool B of the Main Phase of the 2024 CEV Volleyball Champions League. The dates shown are indicative; for television needs, the matches could in fact be played even a day in advance or postponed (dates and times will be official in days).
1st day – 22 November 2023
Trentino Itas-Ach Volley Ljubljana
2nd day – 29 November 2023
Tours Vb-Trentino Itas
3rd day – 13 December 2023
Asseco Resovia Rzeszow-Trentino Itas
4th day – 20 December 2023
Trentino Itas-Tours Vb
5th day – 10 January 2024
Ach Volley Ljubljana-Trentino Itas
6th day – 17 January 2024
Trentino Itas-Asseco Resovia Rzeszow
The identikit of the yellow and blue opponents in Pool B
The X-ray of the opponents that Trentino Volley will face from 22 November 2023 in the group stage of the 2024 CEV Champions League.
Asseco Resovia Rzeszow (Poland)
Among the most popular and important companies in Poland, both for tradition and history, and for the results obtained over the years. The CEV Champions League will return to play in November after six seasons of waiting thanks to the third place obtained in the Play Offs Scudetto after finishing the regular season in first place. However, the last year of the renowned team from the Subcarpathian Voivodeship, located in south-eastern Poland, was devoid of particular satisfactions, bearing in mind that even in the National Cup the race ended in the semifinals.
In his palmares he has seven championships, three Polish Cups and a Super Cup (won in 2013, the last great success), but in the past, despite not winning anything, he has often obtained important prestigious placements also at an international level, as demonstrated by the medals of silver in the 1973 Champions Cup (it was defeated by CSKA Moscow) and 2015 (folded by Kazan) and in the 1973 Club World Cup, an event in which in 2018 he also obtained fourth place. In the 2010 edition it was instead Trentino Volley who stopped it in the Playoffs 6; the Gialloblù prevailed in Trento on 3 March 2010 and then managed to repeat themselves in Poland thanks to the 3-1 victory on the following 3 March at Hala Podpromia.
The coach of the red and white team is the Italian Giampaolo Medei (already on the Civitanova bench in 2017 and 2018), who can count on the confirmation of the hard core of the previous season’s team, led by Drzyzga. Among the other players, the names of the Slovenian spiker Cebulj stand out (formerly on duty, in Trento in the 2019/20 season), the libero Zatorski (ex Belchatow), the central players Kochanowski, Rejno (both ex Kedzierzyn-Kozle) and Klos and the another hammer, the American Defalco (formerly Vibo).
Vb Tours (France)
Formation that refers to the city of over 130,000 inhabitants that bears the same name and is the capital of the Indre et Loire region, is historically one of the most representative transalpine teams. All this is confirmed by the fresh ninth national title obtained last May 13, overcoming Chaumont in the final in the golden set (the teams had won one match each side), and the eleventh French Cup, won on April 2 in the Final against Nice . In his palmares he also counts on four French super cups and, above all, on two continental titles: the Champions League, won in 2005 in Athens by defeating the Greeks of Iraklis Thessaloniki in the final, and the CEV Cup won in 2017, overcoming Trento in the final to the golden set.
Ach Volley Ljubljana (Slovenia)
The Company, which moved definitively from Bled to Ljubljana in 2011, where it had always played in European competitions, has always been the most famous Slovenian club, having launched many players into the international volleyball scene, including Uros Kovacevic and Jan Kozamernik, who Trentino Volley took right from here in 2017.
He will play in the CEV Champions League for the fifteenth time in the last sixteen seasons; in the recent past only in the 2021/22 year did he not take part in it, playing the Challenge Cup (concluded in the semi-final by Narbonne, then winner of the trophy). In the last edition of the top continental trophy it stopped in the group stage (second place in Pool E behind Perugia), then moving on to the CEV Cup where it was eliminated by Modena in the quarter-finals.
He has nineteen national teams on his bulletin board, fourteen Slovenian cups, thirteen Mevza titles (the Central European international trophy) and a Top Teams Cup, won in 2007 by beating Modena at the PalaPanini in the final. The best result obtained in the top club competition remains instead that of the 2009/2010 season, when he really surprised everyone, first by eliminating Lube Banca Marche in the round of 16, and then conquering the Final Four, from where it was eliminated in the semifinal by Trentino Volley , whom they had met twice before (both losing) in the group stage of the 2008/09 edition.
Last season he won the national championship and the Mevza Cup, which is why he decided to continue along the path he had taken, at least as regards technical management. The coach is the confirmed Radovan Gačič (he had also led the team between 2006 and 2009), who will be able to count on the great protagonists of the previous year such as the spikers Šket (ex Modena and Molfetta) and Šen, the opposite Gjorgiev, the central Videcnik and Koncilja, the free Kovacic (ex Ravenna) and the setter Mejal.
