In the opening match of the Men's Volleyball Super League game day, Ural from Ufa will take on Belogorie.
The team from the capital of Bashkortostan is not having the most successful season and currently ranks 13th in the tournament table.
At the beginning of the season, the club lost 8 matches out of 10 and struggled to move away from the bottom of the table. The situation improved slightly at the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, the team achieved several important victories and is now fighting to get out of the play-out zone.
The Belgorod club has once again secured a residential permit in Tula and hosts all its matches at the spanking new Tula-Arena, which is also the home ground for Tulitsa in the Women's Super League. In the off-season, there were significant changes in the coaching staff. Management unexpectedly appointed Alexander Volkov as the head coach. He has a great deal of playing experience but has never before led a men's professional club.
Moreover, a second foreign player joined the team: Zhang Jingyin, a backrow hitter in the Chinese national team.
The Belgorod team begun with two consecutive victories over Gazprom-Yugra and Samotlor, not allowing their rivals to win a single set. However, they subsequently suffered a surprising loss to Nefteyanik from Orenburg (3:1). In the second half of November, the team had a patchy performance: victories over both Zenits with a score of 3:1 and losses in four sets against Moscow’s Dynamo and Novosibirsk’s Lokomotiv. In the following matches, the Belgorod (Tula) team won five more matches and secured a spot in the top-4 at the end of the regular season.
The teams have already met this season in January. Ufa captured an unexpected victory (1:3).
Belogorie is aiming for medals this season and the team is clearly not planning to squander points in matches against teams from the bottom of the tournament table. I think it's worth trying to go through the negative handicap on the guests, even despite Belgorod’s defeat in their last head-to-head meeting.
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