Let's start in the championship. The first opponent is “Yenisey”
The long-awaited day has come - today, 18 October, The anniversary kicks off with four matches, 35-1st Russian Championship in the Super League. 23 the last championships were held with the indispensable participation of Gazprom-Yugra, which never fell below 12th place in the final table, current playoff cutoff. Ugra residents will start the championship 19 March in Krasnoyarsk with a meeting with the local “Yenisei”.
Yenisei, like Gazprom-Yugra, won his group in the preliminary part of the Russian Cup, in the semi-finals defeated CSKA from the major league "A" and now fight with "Fakel" for access directly to one of the next stages of the Cup.. However, and Gazprom-Yugra can get to the same stage in the same spring.
But us, of course, more interested in starting in the main tournament of the season. The contours of Gazprom-Yugra are more or less clear to us, what to expect from Yenisei? The team lost three key players in the offseason. At first, Diagonal Roman Murashko, a graduate of Novosibirsk volleyball, returned to Dynamo-LO. Roman is a native of Kaliningrad, so it's practically a comeback home. But the final player Semyon Dmitriev has a full-fledged return home - Semyon is from Sosnovy Bor. We will not see local native Maxim Bocharov in the Yenisey squad either.. A brilliant previous season opened the way for the young player to join Zenit St. Petersburg, where does he currently compete?, but doesn't play.
Acquisitions of Yenisei, Let's face it, somewhat less bright. Diagonal Evgeniy Rybakov played most of his career in Ural, but last season didn’t go particularly well for him at Nova. The arrival of a talented person looks interesting, but already 30-year-old Denis Shenkel from the same Dynamo-LO: in Sosnovy Bor he was forced to trample the square behind the powerful backs of his teammates, and in Krasnoyarsk he will have every chance to finally loudly declare himself. There will be chances, When will Denis recover from his injury?, which I managed to get in the new club. But Rybakov, also previously injured, managed to recover and already played in the cup clashes with CSKA.
His competitor in position is Vitaly Fetsov, equally capable of brilliant play, and a scattering of mistakes. In the diagonal line, Gazprom-Yugra and Yenisei have at least parity. But setter Konstantin Osipov looks more experienced than his young Surgut colleagues. It's interesting in the endgame, How will the only foreign player perform for two teams?, Slovenian Žiga Stern. The brother of the more famous Tonček Stern, due to an epidemic of injuries in the Slovenian national team, played fully at the recent World Cup - this is both a plus for him in terms of confidence and a minus in terms of physical and functional condition.
Along with him, either Ruslan Galimov will appear on the site, or Nikita Kukhno. In the final game, I don’t see a noticeable advantage for either team. Pair of Yenisey liberos – highly experienced Alexander Yanutov and promising Denis Golubev. Generally, the level of the teams is approximately equal, “Yenisey” has some advantage, except for the fact of playing in their own walls.
For Gazprom-Yugra (however, as for Yenisei) this game is super important. The start always sets a certain leitmotif for further performances, Belgorod and Moscow. Inspection by Yenisei for Gazprom-Yugra – as a litmus test for future ambitions.
