2012 CEV Champions League starts today – Volleyball news
The cracking volleyball action of 2012 CEV Men’s Champions League is scheduled to get the green light on Thursday, May 24 in Greece.
The tournament will be opened with league round and Greek town Katerini will play host to the first-leg matches of Pool A. National teams from Slovakia, Spain, Israel, and hosts Greece will be on board to kick off the action. Denmark, which is also placed
in Pool A, will join the competition in the second leg that will be hosted by Spain.
New Indoor Sports Hall in Katerini is all set to create an excellent field of play for the Champions League matches. League round will cover its length in five flight. Katerini is set to host the first leg from May 24-26. According to the set formula of
the competition, two matches will be played on each day.
Slovakia and Israel are set to meet in the first match of tournament at 18:00 (local time). On the other hand, second match of the opening day will bring the hosts Greece and Spain together. Second match is scheduled to take place at 20:30 (local time).
Participating teams have already installed their bases at the New Indoor Sports Hall in Katerini and soon the action will kick start. Greek national squad is determined to delight the home audience with a convincing performance.
In the recent memory, the local organizers of the event held a press conference ahead of the start of tournament. The coach and captain of the national also attended the press conference and expressed their thoughts about the upcoming matches.
The head coach of the Greek team, Alekos Leonis, stated, “Even though we have a lot of problems to deal with (yesterday our young opposite George Tzioumakas got injured), we promise that we will fight with all our forces against very strong teams such as
Spain and Slovakia.”
Likewise, the skipper of Greek men’s national team Nikolaos Smaragdis said, “We thank the Greek federation for their efforts to make sure we can participate in such a prestigious competition despite all the problems they have to deal daily with.”
Elsewhere, the Pool B matches start on Friday and teams from Romania, Turkey, the Netherlands, Austria, and Czech Republic will jump onboard.
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