The return to action is approaching: on Saturday, April 4th (at 6:00 PM), Cisterna Volley will make its debut in the fifth-place playoff quarterfinals, playing against Milan. Game 1 will be at the Allianz Cloud, Game 2 in Cisterna on Wednesday, April 8th at 8:30 PM. In the event of a tie, the eventual Game 3 to decide who advances to the next round will be played in Milan on Sunday, April 12th (at 6:00 PM).
After a weekend off, Cisterna Volley returned to training today, with a weights and ball session to begin a crucial week aimed at being in top form for Saturday’s match. Milan, for its part, after being eliminated from the championship race by Verona, could lift its second CEV Cup on Wednesday, April 1st: the return leg of the final against Lindemans Aalst is scheduled for the Allianz Cloud, and the Milanese team is starting off with a 3-0 victory in the first leg played in Belgium.
Daniele Mazzone: “After more than a month without official matches, the most difficult task is to regain the right competitive attitude: so much time spent just training inevitably slows down the game, not so much physically but especially mentally,” emphasized the Cisterna Volley middle blocker. “Concentration has waned at times, and it’s up to us now to get it back to the necessary and worthy level to play our cards. We’re facing a good team, with one of the strongest diagonals around: they gave Verona a hard time in the Scudetto playoffs and are about to lift a European trophy. The numbers speak for themselves, and I absolutely don’t think they’ll suffer from the fatigue of the Cup, if we want to call it that. They have the youngest average age of the Regular Season, so it’s easy to recover. We have to play our cards: we know Milan’s strengths and we’ll try to limit them, trying to play our best volleyball.”
