On Wednesday, October 28, Dinamo KAZAN will start their journey in the 2016 CEV DenizBank Volleyball Champions League with a home match in St. Petersburg Volleyball Centre against Azerbaijani club Lokomotiv BAKU.

The last campaign in Europe’s finest league turned out to be not very successful for Dinamo KAZAN. However, the points were taken, and the team composition has been reinforced with the outside spiker from Vakifbank ISTANBUL and world record holder for most points scored in one match, Bulgaria’s Elitsa Vasileva. Setter Anna Matienko from Uralochka-NTMK, libero Victoria Kuzyakina and opposite Daria Isaeva from Omichka have also joined the ranks of Dinamo KAZAN. Now each position in the team line-up is open for competition, which is the right stimulus to progress and get stronger.

However, at the beginning of the season Dinamo KAZAN face some challenges. In particular, the leader of Dinamo KAZAN, world-famous opposite Ekaterina Gamova has been suffering from the recurrence of an old injury, and her full recovery is expected only by the middle of November. The second opposite, Daria Isaeva, previously known as Stolyarova, who is supposed to fill Gamova’s gap, joined the team just over a week ago. All these factors together resulted in a not very successful start for Dinamo KAZAN in the national championship. However, the players managed to quickly get up the nerve after their first defeat and in the next match last Saturday blanked the squad led by legendary Nikolay Karpol 3:0, whose team Uralochka-NTMK EKATERINBURG is also playing in the current season of the Champions League.

The first rival of Dinamo KAZAN in Pool A is the Azerbaijani club Lokomotiv BAKU which takes on the second CL campaign in its history. The team managed to make it to the Playoffs 12 in 2013, having given away to its compatriots from Azerrail BAKU. However, the clubs from Baku are usually referred to as “national teams of the world” since every team has an ample range of foreign players. The same is true for Lokomotiv BAKU where only four out of 12 players have Azerbaijani citizenship and the others have originally come from eight countries of the Western hemisphere. Therefore, it definitely will not be an easy walk for the ladies of Dinamo KAZAN to play against the Baku team. In fact, Pool A promises a load of tough fights and spectacular clashes.

But the head coach of Dinamo KAZAN Rishat Gilyazutdinov knows pretty well about the possible scenarios and is tuning up the team for severe fights. “It doesn’t make any sense to say if I am satisfied with the draw or not, since the draw is a “fait accompli”. There are two Baku teams in our Pool. Usually Pool A rosters are strong-willed and fully committed to qualify to the Final Four. However, there are no invincible clubs. I have repeatedly said that there are no easy matches in the Champions League. At the end of the day, the strongest team claims the victory, and the strongest one will make it to the Final.”