Dynamo delayed at the start – Kommersant

In the men’s championship of Russia in volleyball, the final series of play-offs has started. Zenit Kazan confidently outplayed Dynamo Moscow at home — 3:0 (25:19, 25:20, 25:17). The next match of the final, which will be held in the “up to three wins” format, will take place on Wednesday.

In the finals of the Russian Championship, the two strongest teams of the Superleague met, without a doubt, which also stood out in the regular championship, taking first and second places with almost identical results. With the same ratio of wins and losses (28:2), Zenit scored three points more than Dynamo, and thanks to this received an important home field advantage.

Muscovites have won two previous national championships, while Kazan has not won gold medals since 2018.

Moreover, the last time Zenit reached the final was in the 2018/19 season and since then has not had the opportunity to compete for the title. Finally, the ten-time champion of Russia had this chance, but Dynamo is not averse to winning the third championship in a row.

In the final of this play-off, two powerful volleyball machines collided. Particularly interesting was the personal confrontation between two superdiagonal players from Zenit Maxim Mikhailov and Dynamo Tsvetan Sokolov. Moreover, the Bulgarian scorer was simply unstoppable in the semi-final series with the St. Petersburg “Zenith”, scoring 79 points in 3 meetings, and demanded the closest attention to himself.

Kazan immediately grabbed Sokolov and quickly broke away by three goals, but Anton Semyshev scored steadily against Dynamo while the Bulgarian entered the game. And by the middle of the first game, the guests themselves were already leading “plus two”, when Sokolov turned on his mallet. However, in the end, he, like the whole team, had a serious failure. The blue-and-whites began to hit into the outs and into the net, arranging some kind of parade of all kinds of mistakes. As a result, Zenit easily took the starting set, which ended with Mikhailov’s ace – 25:19.

The second half of the meeting started with an ace by Alexei Kononov, and after two successful attacks and a straight pass by Sam Deru, the Kazan team created a comfortable reserve of four points. As soon as the Muscovites pulled themselves up in the score, the Belgian again brought an important point to Zenit in a difficult game situation. In addition, the owners of these glasses uninterruptedly stamped Mikhailov, who practically did not make mistakes, unlike Sokolov. At the end of the game, the same Deru and Kononov provided their team with a significant lead, and Mikhailov also effectively and very symbolically sheathed Sokolov. 25:20 – and Zenit was already only one set away from victory.

Dynamo began to show signs of life in the third installment, but still experienced huge problems on its own serve, and consequently an acute shortage of break points. The guests polided a little in the opening, and then the swaggering Dmitry Volkov raged, and Kazan finally broke the opponent’s will to resist. The Muscovites let go of Zenit by five goals and, in fact, already quit playing, so the set and the match ended in their complete defeat – 25:17 and 3:0. In a day, the clubs will meet again, and Dynamo will have to show a completely different volleyball in order to still count on success in the final.

Alexander Ilyin