We start with Ufa
25 the championship of Russia in the Superleague Parimatch starts on September, Gazprom-Yugra will hold its first meeting the next day - at home, without spectators, against the Ufa "Ural". Coronavirus pandemic has made its own adjustments, and the upcoming tournament will not be held in the most usual way. In particular, league closed for two seasons from relegation, all teams will take tests regularly, and the favorite of the tournament is Zenit St. Petersburg – barely had time to emerge from quarantine before the start.
But we are interested in the first game of the Surgut team. Paradoxically, guests will be favorites, last year ranked 12th (Gazprom-Yugra finished ninth). In Ufa, after last year's failure, the squad was seriously rotated, inviting, in particular, powerful legionnaires - Canadian spiker Gordon Perrin, which was remembered by the fans for playing for Belogorye in the season before last, and yesterday's favorite of the Surgut public, Machei Muzai.
Curious and also connected with Surgut is the figure of the new head coach of Ural, this is the long-term captain of Gazprom-Ugra, famous Russian volleyball player and novice coach Igor Shulepov. He managed to bring Nizhny Novgorod ASK to the Super League and showed a decent result with this team last year, having earned an invitation to the ambitious Ufa. Which, notice, just with coaches lately and no luck.
Will you be lucky with Shulepov? There is every chance for this, in addition to legionnaires, the team has a strong selection of Russians: binder Roman Poroshin, side gamers Egor Feoktistov and Sergey Nikitin, centers Dmitry Kolenkovsky, Maskim Kulikov, libero Roman Bragin. sorry, I don’t name everyone: the team has a fairly even application, everyone can appear on the site.
As for the "Gazprom-Ugra", then the club took the path of running in the youth - in the rotation of the team there are five players from Zvezda Ugra. Plus players, which will help the new generation to open up and have a chance to declare themselves. The clubs passed the previous preliminary stage of the Russian Cup on different paths: Ural won the mini-tournament in their group, we lost all matches in our. Sure, allowance should be made for the late start of Surgutyan training - due to restrictions, the team started training only 18 August. Will Surgut residents have time to get in good shape by the opening of the championship? Will they be able to resist a better equipped and prepared opponent??
We'll find out soon.
