A Polish team achieves a historic feat for the first time in 43 years! Wins the European Champions League Volleyball Championship!

The men's final of the European Volleyball Union Champions League Volley 2021 (hereinafter referred to as CL) was held in Verona, Italy on May 1st, and Poland's Zakza Kedzierzyn-Kozile (hereinafter referred to as Zakza) defeated Italy's Trentino Volley (hereinafter referred to as Trento) 3-1 (25-22, 25-22, 20-25, 28-26), achieving the first feat for a team and the first time in 43 years for a Polish club.

The winning Zakusa (Photo by CEV)

To be honest, I think the road to this point for Zaksa has been quite rough. Although they made it through the qualifying round in first place without any trouble, they managed to make it to the finals by defeating the previous champions, Roubaix Civitanova (Italy), in the quarterfinals, and Zenit Kazan (Russia), who have won the tournament four times in a row since 2015, in the semifinals, after winning both golden sets in tiebreaks after being tied at one win each.

Trento, their opponent in the final, was also a strong team with three Champions League titles to their name, and looking at the predictions and members at the start of the league, they were undoubtedly a superior team, but the Zakusa players, who had achieved giant-killing feats by defeating the European champions twice in recent years, appeared to have absolute confidence.

Zaksa's Silifka was named tournament MVP (Photo by CEV)

In fact, Trent was often behind in the early stages of each set, but they remained calm and fought bravely. The fourth and final set was also a close match that went down to deuce, but they kept their concentration until the end, and finally Kaczmarek's service ace cut through the receivers to set the game. Poland brought home the European Cup for the first time in nearly half a century.

Five of the seven starters for Zaksa are Polish players, and all five are on this year's Polish national team, but with the exception of libero Zatorski, none of them, including this year's MVP Silivka, are consistently in the starting lineup for the national team. The depth of the Polish volleyball team's player pool is truly frightening. I'm planning to write another article about this year's Zaksa. Anyway, congratulations! And thank you for bringing excitement to us even in these social circumstances!! Dziękujemy!!!