In Focus: Vakifbank Istanbul
Just to refresh our memory: in the last CEV Champions League season VakifBank ISTANBUL took the victory against its rival A. Carraro Imoco CONEGLIANO, and won the competition in four sets at Arena Stožice in Ljubljana. In total, the Turkish won the trophy 5 times in the new history of the Champions League. No one else has been able to do this yet.
Moreover, the team lead by Giovanni Guidetti won all possible competitions, where they were participating last season: they became World and Turkey champions. During the summer pause they got some new players and now they are ready to fight again.
The yellow-blacks signed a contract with the middle blocker 24 years old Bahar Akbay, who had played in PTT in the Turkish League last season. The block height of the young player is 310 cm, and the spike height is 315 cm.
The team also joins Kara Bajema, who recently played for the Polish team Developres Rzeszow, where Kara helped to win the Polish Super Cup, Polish Cup and Polish League in Poland last season. She was also awarded as the Polish Cup Most Valuable Player. The 22-year-old Spiker plays currently for USA National Team. Interesting fact is that before starting her professional career in volleyball, she used to play basketball. Her first club in Europe was Italian Casalmaggiore where she played in 2020.
And another spiker also signed a contract. She is 23 years old Dutch player Nika Daalderop. In her very young ages Nika was practicing beach volleyball and got some significant achievements there. Nika used to play a lot inside her country and outside, lately spent season with Italian Igor Novara. She is also the part of her national team, for example in 2017 they got silver medals of European Championship.
A significant come-back made the ex-player of VakifBank 19-years old Aleksia Karutasu. The last season she spent in Galatasaray. The Romanian opposite has got a Turkish citizenship and since 2024 she’ll be able to represent also their national team. Aleksia was born in Romania, Bucharest. At the age of 13, the young star made her debut in the Romanian National League and became the youngest professional player in Romanian volleyball history. In her country she won both the Romanian League and Cup in 2018. Then the same year she signed her first contract with VakifBank, where she was loaned to Yeşilyurt. That season Aleksia helped a lot to Yeşilyurt to win the CEV Challenge Cup and she also became an MVP.
Also VakifBank announced that they signed the contract with one of the most important stars of the volleyball - opposite 23-years old Paola Egonu. She used to play all the time in Italian teams and also in the national team of Italy. At the Olympics Games in Tokyo she was one of the national flag-bearers.
During her club carrier she already won all possible titles, for example 2 times Champions League with Igor Novara and Imoco Conegliano, besides of the golden medals inside the country. She also has countless amount of individual awards such as Nation League and Champions League MVP. Also the 23-year-old player was selected as the most valuable player in the Italian Cup and the Italian League last season. In VakifBank she’ll wear number 8 jersey.
This season VakifBank will be the part of the Pool C, where they will meet SC POTSDAM (GER), Crvena Zvezda BEOGRAD (SRB) and Igor Gorgonzola Novara (ITA).