The biggest surprise of this year´s Champions League? Turkish Arkas Izmir in the Final Four, no doubts!
Their revenge match against Lokomotiv Novosibirsk turned into a celebration of volleyball and breathtaking „never-give-up“ story, which again showed the trickiness and advantages of the Golden Set rule.
After losing the first match 3-0 in Siberia and the first two sets in Izmir, the obviously underrated squad around setter Kevin Hansen was still strong enough to get back to their feet and slowly overpower their more and more nervous Russian opponent in four consecutive sets!
After the last ball of the Golden set won 15:11, not only Izmir, but all Turkey started to celebrate – because Arkas, at the beginning of season hoping just for an advancing from their pool A – now became the first Turkish men´s team in the final tournament of the CHL and again improved the prestige of Turkish men´s volleyball.
Sure – the so far Champions League best scorer Liberman Agamez of Arkas had especially excellent match (34 points) and Joao Paulo Bravo was not bad as well (20 points), but we should also not forget the magic of Canadian coach Glenn Hoag, who has qualified into Final Four for the FOURTH time during last 11 years with THREE different teams.
Despite the 2+1 foreigner players rule introduced into Turkish league for this season, he took the risk and kept 5 foreigners in team just for the Champions League and even was not afraid of giving chance to young Turkish players.
Yet, all this would not happen without typically stunning atmosphere, crowds of frantic noisy fans, purposely seated as close to the court as possible and equipped with vuvuzelas, drums and pipes, one fervent announcer who was often running into the court during game time to time and the „lucky“ Karsiyaka Arena, which witnessed similarly crazy happy-ending match in the Challenge Cup final in 2009 when Arkas won the first European trophy for a Turkish team ever.
So playing against Arkas at home is tough – in Izmir they lost only 3 of the last 20 European cups matches. The already legendary „Welcome to Arkas Hell“ banner, which has been used in every important European match, usually tells truth – and teams like Patras, Jastrzebski Wegiel, Kedzierzyn, Macerata, Tourcoing and especially Fakel Novy Urengoy already know it.
„Everything starts with a dream“, is the main slogan of club founded in 2001 by Turkish shipping and transport leader Arkas Holding and provided with excellent training facilities. This dream will continue in Lodz where Arkas – again as an unexpected outsider – will face the host Skra Belchatow in the first semifinals.
For sure, nobody will underestimate them again.
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