Verbov defeated Alekno! Kazan remained undefeated in the Super League — ePrimefeed

By Puck Henry

Date: October 25, 2024 Time: 16:50:43

Verbov defeated Alekno! Kazan remained undefeated in the Super League

Piotr Kondakov October 24, 2024, 22:30 Moscow time

The St. Petersburg players gave their opponent almost a full set on serve alone!

The first match of the ninth round became central; After all, it was a Zenit derby: Zenit St. Petersburg faced Zenit Kazan. Well, the coaching duel between Vladimir Alekno and Alexey Verbov. As a result, Zenit-Kazan won a landslide victory. Was it easy? Definitely not. But the Kazan team confidently controlled the match for almost the entire match. Vladimir Alekno’s team was disappointed by its own mistakes.

Pari Super League – preliminary phase (m). ninth round

October 24, 2024, Thursday. 19:30 Moscow time

Zenit Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Zenit-Kazan

Kazan

Zenit St. Petersburg: Babkevich, Krivitchenko, Tarasenko, Tikhonov, Dineikin, Grebennikov, Yakovlev, Chereisky, Butko, Kosmin, Kostadinov, Poletaev, Klyuka, Herrera

Zenit-Kazan: Krotkov, Volvich, Rukavishnikov, Labinsky, Klets, Romanovsky, Christenson, Kononov, Shcherbinin, Volkov, Fedorov, Enin, Mikhailov

Millimeters decided the fate of the first set

The first match turned out to be the most intense. Neither team managed to lead by more than two points. It is not surprising that in the end everything was decided: with the score 24:25, St. Petersburg diagonal forward Vladislav Babkevich was able to score from the baseline at the second attempt, but Alexey Verbov asked for a challenge and it turned out well. The repetition registered a small compensation in the cost of the batch.

Overall, in the first set alone, the Belarusian diagonal attacked 17 times in a row, three more than all his teammates combined. He faced the burden with dignity, but that bias towards one player could not help but have an effect. In Kazan, Mike Christenson held off Dmitry Volkov and Maxim Mikhailov in the first set, putting the main focus on Mikhail Labinsky. The young finisher did not put in a spectacular performance, but he did not fail either.

The risk wasn’t worth it

After winning the first set, the Kazan team finally got used to it and took the initiative. The second and third games followed the same scenario: the guests went ahead by three or four points and maintained their advantage. Vladimir Alekno demanded that his team take risks in the service, but this plan, frankly, did not work. Zenit made 24 errors in 66 serves, almost a match! Those from Saint Petersburg could not put 36% of all their serves in the game. And only three aces. The Kazan team made only 13 errors in 75 serves.

In addition, that night Zenit-Kazan played according to the principle “the harder the better.” It’s a paradox, but with a good finish, Alexey Verbov’s team scored only 40% of the goals, but with a negative reception, this figure increased to 73%!

Dmitri Volkov

Photo: VC “Zenit-Kazan”

And, of course, we cannot fail to mention Dmitry Volkov. The Kazan striker in this match showed incredible numbers in attack: 13 goals out of 14. This is 93% implementation and efficiency, because Volkov did not lose anything in this element.

Alekno will have the opportunity to take revenge

The victory of the Verbov team turned out to be somewhat routine, one could say, a class victory. It is in team class, because the individual skills of the teams are exactly comparable. Zenit-Kazan achieved its eighth victory and continues to confidently lead the Super League.

Well, what about Zenit? Fourth defeat at home for Vladimir Alekno’s team. Of course, this time there will be no strong statements, the team looked decent, the players fought until the end, in the third set they even managed to reduce the lead to one point of five. But there is still no balance in the game in St. Petersburg. And the coach needs to draw conclusions as soon as possible, because now Zenit has a negative balance of wins and losses: 4-5. Well, the Kazan team will have the opportunity to take revenge very soon: in early November the teams will meet in the quarterfinals of the Russian Cup.

Puck Henry

Puck Henry is an editor for ePrimefeed covering all types of news.

Источник: https://eprimefeed.com/sports/verbov-defeated-alekno-kazan-remained-undefeated-in-the-super-league/607397/