Zenit Kazan – Dinamo Moscow
Zenit KAZAN broke away right after the first technical time-out of the opening set with their star Maxim Mikhaylov hitting a series of terrific spikes and serves. On the other side of the net, the real hero in Dinamo’s victory over the four-time club world champions of TRENTINO Diatec, i.e. Pavel Kruglov, was regularly blocked by the Tatars and could not finalize most of his attacks. By the score of 12:7 for the hosts, Dinamo head coach Yuri Cherednik went for some substitutions but it did not change the course of the game as US-American middle blocker David Lee paced Zenit offense and the opening set was cashed quite comfortably with the score of 25-19.
After a very difficult start for the guests from Russia’s capital city, the fate of the second set looked pre-determined quite early; Alexander Abrosimov did shake Dinamo backline with his great serving (7:2) and after that Zenit regularly blocked their opponents to wrap it up at 25-22.
Things did not change much in the third set where the players of Zenit KAZAN looked determined to pocket a straight-set win. They eventually did so as they were paced – once more – by Mikhailov and while the Muscovites looked physically exhausted – they had come to Kazan at 4 am – the hosts could comfortably cruise to a well-deserved 3:0 (25-18).
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