In their penultimate match in Pool A of the 2016 CEV DenizBank Volleyball Champions League – Women 2014 gold medallists Dinamo KAZAN cruised to a 3-0 win over German rookies Allianz MTV STUTTGART (25-17, 25-11, 27-25) to celebrate their fifth straight victory, secure the top position in their group and with it also their qualification to the Playoffs of Europe’s elite competition.

Dinamo KAZAN had recorded four victories in a row going into this match and thus had basically secured a place in the Playoffs of the Champions League. Dinamo had to take two more sets from the match with STUTTGART to cement and guarantee themselves with first place in Pool A. On Tuesday Lokomotiv BAKU had had the upper hand in the Azerbaijani derby with Azerrail, this way compromising STUTTGART chances of progressing to the next stage of the competition.

However, the Germans caught a promising start leading 4-1 before Dinamo KAZAN turned the tables at the first technical timeout (8-7). After that, the hosts kept the initiative and imposed their class extending their margin up to eight points. Ekaterina Gamova literally dominated the scene tormenting the visitors exploiting her stature – she is 202 cm tall – and helping the home side pocket a 25-17 set win.

At the very beginning of the second set, Dinamo KAZAN broke away securing a solid and comfortable margin of six points (8-2). The Volleyball queens from Tatarstan widened their lead to as many as nine points and they continued to ‘bomb’ STUTTGART from every angle of the court (16-7). The situation for the German team got worse following the injury suffered by Kim Renkema who collided with libero Lisa Thomsen when trying to control a challenging serve by Antonella Del Core. A powerful spike killed by Elitsa Vasileva brought the second set to an end (25-11) and with it Dinamo KAZAN made sure they will finish first in Pool A even with one more round still to go.

After achieving their primary goal the players of Dinamo KAZAN slightly slowed down the pace of the match. The German visitors, on the contrary, as if they did not feel the pressure anymore, played better and better, leading 8-6 at the first technical time-out of the third set. However, Ekaterina Gamova claimed some key points to level the score at 10-all and the hosts eventually edged ahead again at 16-13. Their rivals, however, did not give up and closed the gap because of errors made by Russian young spiker Olesya Nikolaeva who had previously replaced Del Core (21-19 for STUTTGART). However, once the Italian veteran returned to the court, everything went back to normal and Dinamo KAZAN secured their fifth straight win in the competition.

Rishat Gilyazutdinov, head coach of Dinamo KAZAN: “We did not set ourselves the task of winning only two sets. Of course, in the third set, we tried a few substitutions that unfortunately did not work very well. However, there was no intention to waste time. Indeed, I congratulate my team and our fans on the victory, as well as on qualifying for the Playoffs of the Champions League as the pool leaders. Now our challenge is to keep up the good work also in the national league. And as the game against Lokomotiv is not that vital, our second lines will go and play in Baku next week.”

Guillermo Naranjo Hernandez, head coach of Allianz MTV STUTTGART: “We have tuned up for this game, we had a good team spirit, but nevertheless it is very difficult to play against such a high-class team as Dinamo KAZAN. In the third set we were lucky in the fact that the opponent replaced Antonella Del Core with Olesya Nikolaeva, and we were able to get even a set point.”