Vero Volley Milano and Imoco Volley Conegliano will play each other in the final of the women’s volleyball Champions League, the main European club competition. Both have just beaten two Turkish teams from Istanbul in the semi-finals: Conegliano won 3 sets to 2 at home and 3-1 away against Eczacibasi, while Milan won against Fenerbahce 3-0 at home and lost 3-1 in Turkey, then winning the “golden set” (in European cups 3-0 and 3-1 are considered equivalent results, and therefore in the event of a victory each, another decisive set is played, the golden, up to 15 points). The final will also be played in Turkey, on May 5th, in a location yet to be defined (probably Istanbul). It will be a challenge between the strongest Italian team of recent years, that is Conegliano, and the team that is trying to do everything to surpass it both in Italy and in Europe, that is Milan, for the moment without succeeding.
In recent years Conegliano has been almost unbeatable: since 2018 it has always won the Italian championship (five times in a row, because in 2020 it was not awarded due to the pandemic) and in 2021 it also won the Champions League. Between 2019 and 2021 the Venetian team, coached since 2017 by Daniele Santarelli, won 76 consecutive matches in all competitions, a world record in women’s volleyball, and this year too they have never lost: they have an open streak of 41 consecutive victories. The last match was lost against Milan, in the series of Scudetto finals last season, which Conegliano won 3 games to 2.
The women’s Vero Volley played in Monza until two years ago, then the management decided to move the team to Milan and change its name to Vero Volley Milano. In the autumn of 2022 she started playing some home games at the Allianz Cloud, one of the main sports arenas in Milan (renovated and very modernized a few years ago), and this year she settled almost permanently in Milan. One of the reasons for this choice, initially much criticized by the Brianza fans, was the promotion of the Monza football team to Serie A, which made it more complicated to manage the simultaneous presence of the matches of a football team and two volleyball teams (there is also a men’s team), all playing in their top championships.
The move to Milan, however, increased the visibility and commercial opportunities for Vero Volley, which began to have the ambition to compete with Conegliano, also thanks to a series of very ambitious purchasing campaigns. Before last season, for example, Milan hired spiker Myriam Sylla, captain of the Italian national team, who until then had played in Conegliano. This year, Paola Egonu also arrived in Milan, considered among the strongest players in the world. Egonu, 25 years old, had played three years in Conegliano between 2019 and 2022, winning all possible trophies, and then last year she had been in Turkey, at Vakifbank, with which she had won the Champions League (her third in her career , after those with Bergamo and Conegliano).
Paola Egonu and Myriam Sylla with the Vero Volley Milano shirt (Pawel Piotrowski/Newspix via ZUMA Press)
With the arrivals of Sylla and Egonu, who joined the national team setter Alessia Orro and other international level players, Vero Volley, coached by Marco Gaspari, has become one of the best Italian and European teams: but every time came close to winning a trophy but always had to deal with Imoco Volley Conegliano, only to end up losing. In Milan’s ambitious sporting growth, accompanied by investments and high-level planning, beating Conegliano is the decisive step, but also the most difficult and the one that the team has still not managed to do in any way. In Italy and Europe, Milan has beaten practically every opponent that has come before it, except Conegliano.
🏆🇮🇹
See you soon @ImocoVolleyfor an exciting Italian derby at the Super Finals 🔥#ForTheLoveOfTheGame 💙 #CLVolleyW pic.twitter.com/zawIGBxDpj— Vero Volley (@VeroVolley) March 20, 2024
This season the two teams have faced each other four times so far, and the Venetians have always won: 3-1 in the Italian Super Cup, 3-2 in the Italian Cup final and then 3-1 in Milan and 3-0 at home in the two regular season games, in the league. Conegliano finished Serie A1 in first place, with 25 wins out of 25, and will be the first seed in the playoffs for the scudetto. Milan also finished third behind Scandicci, with 21 wins and 4 defeats. The way the table is structured, the two teams could once again find themselves in the final of the playoffs, like last year.
In the meantime, it is already certain that they will face each other in the Champions League final, where Milan will be able to try in one fell swoop to win this trophy for the first time in its history, becoming European champions, and to finally beat the team that in the last two years he beat her every time in the decisive moments.
2024-03-21 12:09:41
#problem #Vero #Volley #Milano #Conegliano
