Dynamo Moscow won the Russian Volleyball Centenary Cup

The first title of the men’s volleyball season went to Dynamo Moscow. In the final of the Centenary Cup in Kaliningrad, it beat the current national champion Zenit-Kazan in a five-set match, in which it gave up two starting games to the opponents.

The tournament, which was held in honor of the centenary of Russian volleyball, ended with a magnificent match. It brought together two of the country’s strongest clubs – Dynamo, which won the national championship gold in 2021 and 2022, and Zenit Kazan, which beat it last season. They will most likely be the favorites of the next championship, which starts on Wednesday. The first clash of the two giants of the season turned out to be extremely dramatic.

The Kazan team held the Cup of the Century almost without failure, destroying one opponent after another on the way to the final. In the semi-final match, they easily defeated the strong Novosibirsk Lokomotiv, and it seemed that Dynamo could not avoid the fate of the railway workers. In the first two games, the Zenit players were superior to them in everything, and things seemed to be heading towards a quick defeat.

But instead of going with the flow, Dynamo in the third game adjusted its serve reception, added accuracy, and soon it was dictating its terms to Zenit.

The match headed to a tiebreaker, which decorated this final. The rivals alternately took the lead and squandered the advantage they had gained with blood. In the end, everything was decided by Dynamo’s pitch. With the score 13:13, it resulted in a bad Zenit move, which forced Dmitry Volkov to attack from an awkward position. He missed. The Kazan team won back one match point, but on the second, Denis Bogdan again forced the receivers to fake with a powerful serve. Now the attacking blow did not take place at all.

Arnold Kabanov