In focus: #CLVolleyM Pool B

Pool B is arguably the most unpredictable of the five in the upcoming pool stage of the men’s CEV Champions League Volley 2023, with no clear favorites or clear underdogs and with all four teams featuring some top-caliber stars with the potential to decide matches.

It will be the second pool to come into action. An hour and a half after the fourth round gets underway in neighboring Poland with a Pool A match on November 8, the fans at the Max-Schmeling-Halle in the German capital will cheer on as, at 19:30 local time, the first whistle for the Pool B opener between hosts Berlin Recycling Volleys and Bulgaria’s Hebar Pazardzhik marks the beginning of a hard-fought race, consisting of a total of 12 matches, split into the six legs of a double round-robin format, that will last through January 25, 2023. On that date, the pool winner and quite possibly the pool runner-up will have booked their spots in the quarterfinals of Europe’s most prestigious club competition.

Poland’s Aluron CMC Warta Zawercie and Turkiye’s Halkbank Ankara are the other two teams to contest these spots in Pool B. They will open their campaigns two days later, on November 10, at 18:00 local time, with a game against each other in the Polish city of Dabrowa Gornicza.

Berlin Recycling Volleys represent Germany in the Champions League as the country’s national champions. They have been the reigning German champions since 2016 and have won a total of 12 national titles in Bundesliga history. Their best result in the Champions League so far was the bronze they took in 2015. Last season BR Volleys reached the quarterfinals. The club’s international achievements also include the 2016 CEV Cup trophy and the CEV Challenge Cup bronze medals in 1999 and 2010. The German champions have already filed away their first trophy this season by winning the national super cup earlier this month. BR Volleys shut out archrivals VfB Friedrichshafen in the final while Czech star opposite Marek Sotola was named MVP of the match.

Hebar Pazardzhik is the new dominating force in Bulgarian men’s volleyball. This year the club from Pazardzhik won their second consecutive national championship title, this time combined with the national cup and super cup trophies in an impressive golden treble. The team is amidst its second Champions League appearance and, just like last season, successfully made its way through the early rounds into the pool stage of the tournament. To be competitive at the continental level, Hebar relies on a long array of international stars like former Bulgarian national team members Viktor Yosifov, Todor Aleksiev, Nikolay Nikolov and Teodor Salparov or German national team opposite Simon Hirsch.

If one team were to be named favorite to win Pool B, it would probably be Poland’s Aluron CMC Warta Zawercie, whose roster features top-class players like Serbia’s Uros Kovacevic, Poland’s Bartosz Kwolek or Argentina’s Santiago Danani. The team from Zawercie arrives at this season’s European Cups as 2022 PlusLiga bronze medalist, which was the best result in the club’s history. Aluron is a newcomer to the European Cups and is about to make its historic debut at the highest possible continental level.

Halkbank Ankara claimed last season’s silver medals in Turkiye to qualify for the pool stage of this season’s Champions League. In 2014, the club hosted the Final Four tournament in Ankara and earned silver, the highest achievement in its history, along with the 2013 CEV Cup trophy. Last season Halkbank took Challenge Cup silver, adding it to the two bronze medals they had from earlier editions of the competition. Undoubtedly, phenomenal Dutch opposite Nimir Abdel-Aziz is the biggest star on Halkbank’s roster this season.

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