Dynamo’s path to gold lies through Zeniths – Kommersant
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Moscow “Dynamo” became the second finalist of the play-off of the championship of Russia. The Blue and White defeated Zenit again, this time in St. Petersburg, with a score of 3:0 (25:19, 36:34, 25:23) and closed the series in three matches. In the final, they will be opposed by Zenit from Kazan, which broke the resistance of Lokomotiv the day before.
After giving away both Moscow matches, Zenit faced a very difficult task, and given the fact that recently Dynamo had been beating him regularly in various tournaments and formats, it was almost impossible. It can be said that Petersburgers have developed a kind of Dynamo syndrome, which they are stubbornly trying to overcome. And it seems that progress has even been made this season, when at the preliminary stage of the championship Zenit won 3:1 in Moscow, and at home lost to the blue and white only in a tie-break. But in the playoffs, everything returned to normal again. Moreover, in the first meeting, Dynamo got out of a hopeless situation and won back several match points.
Problems for Zenit were added by the illness of the main diagonal Viktor Poletaev, whose duties were performed by the under-player Yegor Klyuka. He and Matthew Anderson were the main strike force of the hosts. True, the American in the debut of the meeting hit out twice, and Kluka was blocked one-on-one by his Dynamo counterpart Tsvetan Sokolov.
As a result, the guests quickly went into the gap, which reached six points on the innings of Ilya Vlasov. For the Petersburgers, the host Fedor Voronkov obviously did not get into the game, and he was replaced by Kirill Ursov.
But the first batch by that time had already been actually lost. Muscovites confidently took it away, ending with a lethal block of Sokolov on Anderson – 25:19.
In the second set, Zenit started a fight and took the lead for the first time during this match after Ursov’s ace. Even the libero Zhenya Grebennikov brought one point to the team when he sightedly threw the ball over the net into an empty area. Nevertheless, Dynamo regained the advantage, but the hosts did not let go of the opponent and dragged them into the most stubborn ending, in which they were the first to reach the set point. Anderson had the opportunity to immediately finish the game, but ran into a block, and then Kluka missed his chance when the referee first awarded the victory to Zenit. The mentor of the capital club Konstantin Bryansky achieved the cancellation of this decision. As a result, the teams exceeded the mark of 30 points, and the unstoppable Sokolov still put the final point – 36:34.
With the score 0:2 in sets and 0:2 in the series, only a miracle could have saved the Petersburgers, but it was very difficult for them to believe in it. In addition, they still could not do anything with Sokolov, who, back in Moscow, shipped them a total of “fifty kopecks” for two meetings. And now he scored an incredible 29 points. Klyuka, of course, outright lost their micro-match to the Bulgarian diagonal, and he literally hammered balls like a machine, not paying attention to which block in height and power was counteracting him.
Zenit fought to the end and Anderson’s efforts even eliminated the guests’ three-point advantage, which lasted for almost the entire third installment. In the end, however, the hosts fell behind again, and Dynamo earned a triple match point.
In two draws, they somehow fought off Sokolov, and then the setter Pavel Pankov “twitched” and let Anton Semyshev score the winning goal – 25:23. It seemed to the judges that the Dynamo player got out, but Bryansky took another request and won the decisive point.
Dynamo again left Zenit without trophies, and for the third time in a row it will compete for the gold medals of the Russian championship. Two previous attempts were successful, but now the Muscovites will have to try hard to surpass another, stronger and more motivated Zenit from Kazan, who beat Lokomotiv in four matches.
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