The title of this piece may seem like a simple date, but for me it is not so. Exactly on that day(now more, now less) Trento won his first Champions League.
After years of victories, Luckily, I received many, this has a very special memory for me. I've never been, before then, in a team built to win, a working group with the stated goal of reaching the end and raising the cup to the podium. It was also my first international experience. It seems trivial but organizing the match preparation work in parallel between the Italian and European championships was not easy at all. Even a couple of weeks before our home debut against ACH Volley Bled, me and the Team Manager Riccardo Michieletto, we traveled to Vienna to watch the MEVZA Cup match between the hosts (they are also included in our group) and just the formation of Bled…
Luckily the journey to Prague (home of the Final Four) it was quite easy, and we managed to qualify for the final four by winning all matches. In the semifinal we met Macerata (who had already beaten us in the Super Cup at the beginning of the season) and we won decisively, qualifying for the final. The day after (il 5 exactly April) affrontammo i greci dell’Iraklis, who surprisingly eliminated Iskra Odintsovo in the semifinals. Everything happened in the pre-match with the Greek fans who literally set fire to the O2 Arena. The police in riot gear had to intervene in order to allow the start of the race. I can not tell the fear felt in those moments.
Then the game started and there was just the field, the ball and the two teams to analyze and study, the surrounding environment was muffled and had taken on an unreal atmosphere… until Kaziyski's last two aces. From that moment I don't remember anything until dinner at the hotel: I reviewed videos and photographs in the following days and weeks which allowed me to reconstruct what I had done in those moments immediately after the end of the race, but only the joy and satisfaction felt at that moment remained in my head.
Victory number 1, indelible victory.
