Lisbona (Portugal), 03 December 2024

2025 CEV Cup, on Wednesday in Portugal (8 pm): the first leg of the round of 16

2025 CEV Cup is back in focus on the Trentino Itas calendar: on Thursday, December 4th in Lisbon, the European Champion team will play the first leg of the round of 16 of the tournament, facing the home team Sport Lisboa e Benfica. The match is scheduled to start at 8 PM Italian time and will be broadcast live on Radio Dolomiti.
HERE ITAS TRENTINO Having finished in second place in the first half of the regular season of the SuperLega Credem Banca 2024/25, Sbertoli and his teammates immediately dive back into international competitions, particularly the CEV Cup, a European tournament in which they have only participated in a previous round (the round of 32), characterized by two clear victories over the Romanian team Galati.
In their second double commitment of the continental adventure, Trentino Itas will face one of the most equipped teams from the Iberian Peninsula; the match against Benfica will also kick off a particularly intense period for Fabio Soli’s team, which from Wednesday, December 4, until Sunday, December 22, will play at least six times away from Trento. This includes three confirmed commitments in Brazil for the Club World Championship (which could become five if they qualify for the Final Four), the return match in Cagliari against the same Portuguese team, and a league match in Taranto.
“With the round of 16, this competition truly comes to life, as evidenced by the fact that we will face a team like Benfica, which plays good volleyball and is certainly stronger than the one we faced in the previous round,” explained the coach while presenting the upcoming match in Portugal. “The level of the tournament is rising, and we want to be ready and achieve a positive result, also considering the return match that will take place just after our return from Brazil. We will encounter a tenacious and experienced opponent who will play freely; we will need to respond with our technical and temperamental qualities, delivering a focused and consistent performance. This matchup with the Portuguese team is a great opportunity and will be useful both for the cup and to prepare us properly for the matches we will play in Brazil starting next week for the Club World Championship”.
Trentino Itas will approach the first leg of the round of 16 without only Kozamernik and will complete their preparation with training sessions this evening and Wednesday morning.
FIRST EVER AWAY MATCH IN PORTUGAL This ongoing trip marks Trentino Volley's first ever away match in Portugal, thus allowing them to step into the nineteenth different European country in eighteen years of international activity thanks to the 2025 CEV Cup. For the yellow-blue club, the furthest west they had traveled in European competitions until last week was to Teruel (Spain) on January 18, 2012, where they achieved a 3-0 victory in the Champions League group stage. In total, the club from Via del Brennero has already faced ninety-three European away matches (twenty of which were in the CEV Cup), achieving victory in sixty-nine of those cases. The match in Lisbon will be the 223rd international game in the yellow-blue history (record: 179 wins, 43 losses). On Wednesday, Trentino Volley will play in the ninth capital city of a different European country in its history; others already visited include Ankara, Athens, Belgrade, Berlin, Ljubljana, Moscow, Prague, and Vienna.
THE OPPONENTS The double 3-0 victory over the Slovenians from Kamnik in the round of 32 of the competition has allowed Sport Lisboa e Benfica to face the reigning European Champion team right before their participation in the Club World Championship. For this reason, Wednesday's meeting is particularly significant and eagerly awaited in the Lusitanian capital and by its fans, the same ones who follow the fortunes of the glorious football team, given that Benfica is, in fact, one of the most important sports clubs in the country. For five years it has been the undisputed leader of the Primeira Divisão, the Portuguese national championship, which it has won twelve times in total; for this reason, in September it played the first preliminary round to participate in the Champions League for the seventh time (also played last season, where it stopped at the group stage facing Piacenza), where it was eliminated by Las Palmas in the golden set. The best European result in its history is the second place in the 2015 CEV Cup, achieved by losing the final against Novi Sad.
The roster available to coach Marcel Matz includes some names already known to volleyball enthusiasts, such as the Brazilian opposite Banderò (formerly in Italy with the jerseys of Vibo Valentia, Corigliano, and Civita Castellana) and the Austrian middle blocker Wohlfahrtstätter (formerly Vienna), who plays diagonally to the Canadian Eshenko. The setter is the Portuguese Da Silvia Violas (the only Lusitanian player in the sextet along with the libero Casas), while in the outside hitter positions are the Cuban Nivaldo Nadhir and the Brazilian Ryuma Oto Aleixo. In the top Portuguese championship, it is currently in second place, two points behind the leader Sporting (nine wins in ten games); last weekend it achieved a tie-break victory on the field of Vitòria SC. The roster of Sport Lisboa e Benfica: 2. Bernardo Silva (l), 3. Peter Wohlfarstaetter (c), 5. Francisco Leitao (p), 7. Ivo Casas (l), 9. Diaz Gomez Nivaldo Nadhir (s), 10. Pablo Natan Ventura Machado (s), 11. Pearson Eshenko (c), 12. Mathesu Alejandro Hoffman Da Cunda (c), 13. Felipe Airton Banderò (o), 15. Eduardo Brito (c), 16. Tomas Teixeira (s), 17. Tiago Da Silva Violas (p), 18. André Ryuma Oto Aleixo (s), 20. Diogo Fernades (c), 21. Michal Godlewski (o). Coach Marcel Matz.
THE COMPETITION FORMULA The 2025 CEV Cup consists of seven double rounds (home and away) of matches (Round of 32, Round of 16 – already played, Round of 8, Playoff, Quarterfinals, Semifinals, and Final) in a knockout format. The team that advances is the one that obtains the highest number of points over the two matches, awarded as in the championship: 3 for a 3-0 or 3-1 victory, 2 for a tie-break win, 1 for a tie-break loss (golden set to 15 in case of a tie in points – the same system as the Playoffs 12 of the CEV Champions League). Whoever advances will face in the Playoff the winner of the match between Corona Brasov (Romania) and Selver x Taltech Tallin (Estonia): the first leg match between the two teams will be played on Wednesday evening at 6 PM.
THE PRECEDENTS Wednesday's match will be the first-ever meeting in the history of the two clubs. In its twenty-five years of history, Trentino Volley has never faced a Portuguese team before.
THE REFEREES The match will be officiated by Gloria Souto Jimenez, a Spanish first referee from Mallorca, and Marko Oravainen from Lapinlahti, Finland. Neither of them has any previous experience officiating Trentino Volley matches.
RADIO AND INTERNET The match will be continuously covered live from Portugal by Radio Dolomiti, media partner of Trentino Volley, starting at around 20:05. On the website www.radiodolomiti.com, you can check all the regional network frequencies and also listen to the match commentary streaming in the "on air" section.
To follow the point-by-point progress of the game, you can visit the official CEV website at www.cev.eu, which will provide live scores. Alternatively, you can follow the Trentino Volley website www.trentinovolley.it, which will also offer set-by-set commentary a few minutes after each set ends.
Updates will also be actively posted on the yellow-blue Social Networks, especially on www.trentinovolley.it/instagram and www.trentinovolley.it/twitter.

Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office