Fenerbahçe Opet ISTANBUL put a stop to A. Carraro Imoco CONEGLIANO's winning strike
Recap
In the first Quarter-Final match for Fenerbahçe Opet ISTANBUL and A. Carraro Imoco CONEGLIANO, Fenerbahçe took a well-deserved win in front of an amazing home crowd who cheered them on throughout the whole match. The team from Istanbul is now one step closer to the Semi-Finals of #CLVolleyW.
It was definitely an exciting match, even more so because Imoco was completely unbeatable against Fenerbahçe in the Champions League. Up until this point. The Italians won all six previous CL meetings with the Turkish side, and now history wrote itself.
Also, what is interesting is that Imoco was in the lead only once throughout the whole match! This happened at the first point of the second set (0-1) and the rest was a game that was completely played by Fenerbahçe.
Fenerbahçe walked into the first set, and also the whole match, full of confidence. They were the ones dictating the tempo of the game. With 8-4, they already had a nice advantage which only grew later on (17-9). There wasn’t much that Imoco can do given the fact that the blocks from Fenerbahçe were on point today. The team from Istanbul closed the set by 25-19.
The second set was quite similar to the first one. The only difference is that Imoco had their first and only lead in the match (0-1). Firstly the cat-and-mouse type of game was played where Fenerbahçe and Imoco were catching one another, but Fenerbahçe was always one step ahead. They soon managed to separate from the Italians (13-7) and they kept the advantage up until the very end of the set (25-17).
The confidence that Fenerbahçe had at the beginning of the match only grew throughout the match. In the last set, they managed to separate pretty quickly and had everything in their hands. With eight points ahead in the middle of the set (17-9) it was clear that this match will be completely taken over by Fenerbahçe. And that is what happened. With 25-19, they closed the third set and the whole match and with that secured the 3-0 win.
The MVP of the match was the 18-year-old Ana Cristina Menezes Oliveira de Souza who was the best on the field with 16 scored points and 56 % of the spike.
The second Quarter-Final match between these two teams is next Thursday.
Monica De Gennaro"We started out hesitant and they gained confidence. They have very strong offensive terminals, if they gain confidence then it's difficult to stop them. Our block and our defense today didn’t work as well as usual. We played a game below our standard level, we have to look in the next days what we did wrong, correct the mistakes and present ourselves with a different attitude in the return match at Palaverde. We still have our chance in front of our great fans and we will play it."
Player of A. Carraro Imoco CONEGLIANO