Let's give the fight to Zenit
St. Petersburg Zenit in Surgut is always serious and interesting. The guests played the match of the previous round last year, beating Enisey at home in five games, but were stuck in an unusual eighth place. Gazprom-Yugra needs rehabilitation procedures after the skating rink, under which the team fell in Novosibirsk. In terms of resources, the residents of Surgut are immeasurably far from Lokomotiv, and from "Zenith", but we have not forgotten how to fight in any circumstances with any opponent.
Zenit this season continues to suffer from the chronic absence of injured leaders - Viktor Poletaev and Yegor Klyuka. Volleyball would be completely different with them, but also those, those who come out onto the court now are far from whipping boys. Two connecting levels of the national team: Dmitry Kovalev and Surgut native by birth and volleyball education Igor Kobzar. In the center of the net is one of the best blockers in the country, Ivan Yakovlev, with the support of the experienced Andrey Ananyev, powerful Maxim Kosmin and Alexey Safonov, who began his career in Surgut. Fedor Voronkov is on fire in the final game, another position is closed by Andrey Titich and Timofey Tikhonov. In the absence of Poletaev, the diagonal is given to Pavel Zheleznyakov. As for the libero, then here at Zenit everything is more than fine - Tokyo Olympic champion Zhenya Grebennikov is considered to be the best player in the world in this role.
To live up to ambition, Zenit needs reinforcements in the positions of Poletaev and Klyuka, what the club has successfully done literally in the last ten days. The best scorer of the Super League of the season was loaned from Fakel 2021/2022 Belarusian Vladislav Babkevich. Initially Vlad is diagonal, but in "Torch" it, for example, countryman Klyuki, rebuilt into a follow-up game. Got a question, in what capacity is it primarily considered in St. Petersburg, and the answer came just the other day along with the news, that Zenit signed diagonal Romanian national team player Alexandru Rată.
Nuance is, whatever Babkevich, Surgut residents will not see Ratsa on the site. The Belarusian was injured at the time of the transition and there is a high probability, that I didn’t have time to fully recover, and the Romanians simply did not have time to arrive at the location of the new club. But Viktor Poletaev flew to Surgut - maybe, we'll see him?
Predicting the playing composition of Zenit is not an easy task also because, that head coach Viktor Sidelnikov, worthily replacing Vyacheslav Zaitsev himself in the famous Avtomobilist at one time, loves to combine and as a trainer. Most often he is forced to do this by circumstances., but Sidelnikov cannot be denied creativity: he also played with two setters, and with three finishers, and with three central ones on the block, and Zhenya Grebennikov scored an ace as a finisher.
However, and we have Obmochaev marked with a block, and in Surgut there is always room for non-standard moves. Will they be available for the match with Zenit?, We’ll find out tomorrow at the Premier Arena. As always, we invite fans to the stands, Fortunately, the New Year holidays allow you to easily plan a bright sports spectacle on your personal calendar. Let's support our guys in the battle with a very serious opponent! the, that there will be a battle is guaranteed.
