COLLISION WITH LOCOMOTIVE

The second round of the Russian Championship "Gazprom-Yugra" is playing at home - the first match on the home ground promises a hot fight with a very interesting opponent, Novosibirsk "Locomotive".

This club always sets itself the most ambitious goals - and often achieves them. Railwaymen have won two Russian Cups, championship silver and bronze, as well as a victory in the European Champions League. However, along with the ups, there were downs - for example, defeated by Gazprom-Yugra in the quarter-finals of the playoffs in 2015 year or seventh place in the last championship.

Last year, Novosibirsk gathered a very combat-ready squad, having won against "Belogorye" the dispute for Georg Grozer, having bought Aleksey Rodichev in Surgut and calling Arslan Ekshi from Turkey. But the season didn't work out.. Club management, Nevertheless, extended the credit of trust to head coach Plamen Konstantinov, adding more depth and quality to the composition.

Judge for yourself - in the off-season, highly experienced Konstantin Bakun came to Lokomotiv, Nikolai Apalikov, Artem Ermakov, and the updated line of legionnaires looks more than solid - this is a freshly baked two-time world champion, binder Fabian Jizga, whom Surgut residents saw last season as part of the Greek Olympiacos in the Challenge Cup matches, as well as one of the leaders of the Serbian national team Marko Ivovich. Let's add here Jizga's replacement Maxim Shulgin and Pavel Zakharov, who has proven himself in games for Samotlor and Yenisei.

Together with the remaining Nikolai Pavlov, Alexey Rodichev, Ilyas Kurkayev, Roman Martynyuk, Artem Smolyar and Sergey Savin recruits formed a team, once again ready to storm the highest peaks of Russian volleyball. Games in the preliminary stage of the Cup of Russia, as well as the match of the first round against Novokuibyshev "Nova" (3:0), talking about, that the team is ready for exploits. Plamen Konstantinov is aware, that he may not be forgiven for the second failure in a row.

For Surgut residents, Lokomotiv has always been a good irritant - there were various reasons for this. Current, perhaps, therein, that none of the Superleague teams has so many former Gazprom-Ugra players, starting with Plamen Konstantinov himself. This is Rodichev, and Bakun, and Martyniuk, and Smolyar, and Apalikov. All these players, with the exception of Apalikov, acquired the status of high-level players in Surgut - it will be extremely interesting to meet them now on the other side of the grid.

Is the Surgut squad capable of defeating one of the potential leaders of the championship? Theoretically, Gazprom-Ugra can beat anyone: for this you need to remove the amount of marriage, which did not allow us to “pull out” the match in Belgorod, while maintaining a high level of concentration in the defense and on the block, as well as aggression on the pitch and in attack. Anyway, debut match at the Premier Arena promises to be interesting: not without reason, the head coach of the Surgutians Alexei Babeshin promised, that for each match the players of Gazprom-Ugra will go out as for the last battle.

2 tour of the Russian Championship 2019 on volleyball. men, Super League

20 October, 18:00, SK “Prime Arena”, g. Surgut

Match results; Online account; Broadcast LIVE: tvstart.ru, laola1.tv

“Gazprom-Yugra” – “locomotive” 2:3 (19:25; 25:23; 19:25; 25:21; 11:15), match statistics.