The favorites passed the quarterfinals without disruption – Sport – Kommersant

Clubs Zenit-Kazan and Dynamo (Moscow) “dry” beat Nizhny Novgorod ASK and Novy Urengoy Fakel in the quarterfinal series of two matches and were the first to reach the semifinals of the Russian volleyball championship. In the other two pairs, it came to the third, decisive, meeting: the St. Petersburg “Zenith” will receive the “Dynamo” from the Leningrad Region, and the Novosibirsk “Locomotive” – ​​the Belgorod “Belogorye”.

There is nothing strange in the fact that Zenit-Kazan and Dynamo confidently coped with the quarter-final barrier. These clubs finished in the top two spots of the regular season standings, allowing them to miss out on the opening round of the playoffs. And in principle, in the course of the season, they looked like unconditional favorites.

As a result, the rivals of Kazan and Muscovites in the quarterfinals – the ASK and Fakel clubs, for which getting into the top eight can already be considered an achievement, did not manage to win a single match against the giants.

True, if for the reigning champion of the country Dynamo his confrontation with Fakel turned out to be quite easy, then Kazan from ASK had to tinker in the return game away: they defeated their rivals only in a tie-break.

But the St. Petersburg “Zenith”, which survived a very nervous – with ups and downs, with a change of coach – “regular season”, had to deal with a neighboring club. And this pair had an exciting second match. In it, Dynamo from the Leningrad region took the upper hand in four games, in two – on the marathon “balance”, with a score of 32:30.

The pair, made up of Lokomotiv and Belogorye, seemed the most intriguing and lived up to expectations. In the first match, the Novosibirsk team won at home in three sets, but there was a struggle in each. In the second, the Belgorod team, playing home matches this season in Tula, took revenge – 3:1.

The decisive matches of two quarter-final series stretched to the maximum distance will be held on April 11 in St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk.

Arnold Kabanov