Betim, Brazil, December 5, 2019 – Zenit Kazan earned its second win at the 2019 FIVB Volleyball Men’s Club World Championship as the Russians downed reigning European champions Cucine Lube Civitanova of Italy 3-2 (12-25, 23-25, 25-12, 25-20, 15-10) on Thursday at the Ginasio Poliesportivo Divino Braga, in Betim, Brazil.
Zenit Kazan’s opposite Denis Zemchenok: “Our first set was really bad, but after that we got better and managed to get an important win. It was good that all of our players got to play as we’ll need everyone in the final matches. I think we still need to improve, especially on our serving, but we have another training session before the semifinals and we’ll try to take advantage of it.”
Cucine Lube Civitanova’s head coach Ferdinando de Giorgi: “We knew that we just needed to win one set to finish first and after that we thought it would be more valuable for us to give some time to some players who haven’t been on the court a lot. Now we have one day off until the semifinals and we’ll prepare the best way we can. Some players will rest and we’ll get some work done with others.”
Cucine Lube Civitanova’s setter Bruno Rezende: “We knew we’d have to play five matches in six days here and that at some point we’d need to rest some players. So our goal was to start strong, win the first set and then sub off the players who had been on the court for most of the first matches. (Amir) Ghafour is recovering well and the idea is that we’ll have him on the court for the final matches, so that would be great.”