In focus: Eva Yaneva

Eva Yaneva is a true icon in the world of volleyball. Not only because of her smiling nature, positive character and the many victories on the volleyball courts, but also because of the biggest victory of her life, that over cancer. Despite everything she went through, the Bulgarian star is still an active player at the age of 37 and able to compete at the highest level. She and her teammates from France’s Volero Le Cannet are eager to hit the CEV Champions League 2023 courts as their Pool B campaign gets underway on December 7.

In her early years, Eva had a passion for horse riding and dreamt of becoming a veterinarian. Then, under the influence of her dad, a ski jumper, she turned to skiing, but when she was 11 years old, a close friend of hers accidentally took her to the volleyball hall of CSKA Sofia, where she found her new passion. Once sensing the adrenaline of winning medals and championship titles, she knew that volleyball was where she belonged.

At the age of 18, the talented outside hitter received her first call to the Bulgarian senior national team and contributed to the seventh place the Lionesses claimed at the 2003 CEV European Championship. Yaneva played for and also captained Bulgaria for many years, earning four CEV European League podiums in the process, with two silver and two bronze medals. Even after formally retiring from the national team, she missed that adrenaline and the emotions the Bulgarian fans gave her, so she kept coming back to help the squad at various competitions.

Shortly after joining the national team, Yaneva also made her first international transfer and joined Russia’s Stinol Lipetsk for the 2004-2005 season. The following year she moved to France’s RC Cannes, where she spent some of the most successful years of her career. In her five seasons with the club, they triumphed five times as national champions and five times as national cup winners, in addition to claiming two Champions League medals, a 2006 silver and a 2010 bronze.

Afterwards, Yaneva’s club career took her through numerous teams and countries. She also played in Japan, Romania, China, Turkiye, Slovakia and Poland, with more periods in Russia and France in between. While winning plenty of national trophies and medals, Eva had to overcome many injuries and, on top of that, the ovarian cancer she was diagnosed with in 2013 when she played for Japan’s JT Marvelous Nishinomiya.

In 2019, the 186-cm-tall outside returned to France and joined Volero Le Cannet, that club that had recently been formed by the merger of Switzerland’s Volero Zurich and France’s Rocheville Le Cannet. In her first season with the team, they had reached the CEV Cup semifinals, when the season was prematurely interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. In 2021-2022, Yaneva and her teammates advanced to the quarterfinals of the same competition. She also captained Volero to its first national title and national cup trophy in France and the club earned the right to compete in the Champions League for the first time.

“We are happy to be part of this prestigious tournament,” Eva Yaneva told cev.eu. “Although our squad is relatively young and inexperienced, we hope to have a good performance and get as far as possible. Anyway, the participation will give us the opportunity to play and gain experience at the highest level. Coming to think of it, it has been a while since I played in the Champions League myself – maybe since I was with Dinamo Kazan – and I am glad to have another opportunity to perform on this stage. I hope to be in good health so I can still have fun on the court…”

Watch the Champions League live on EuroVolleyTV.