Champions of Italy vs. champions of Europe, big match in Superleague
The seventh round of the Superlega Credem Banca 2025/26 regular season will be played this weekend. The Itas Trentino men’s team will once again be engaged in front of its home crowd, hosting Sir Susa Scai Perugia on Sunday, November 23 at the BTS Arena: Champions of Italy versus Champions of Europe.
The six points obtained in the last two rounds of the championship have reprojected the yellow-blue lineup into the Top Four of the standings, allowing it to recover precious lengths on all the teams ahead of it, including Perugia. The match scheduled for Sunday therefore offers an opportunity to further reduce the gap from the leader, with the opportunity to count on the BTS Arena factor, a facility where Trentino Volleyball has scored in the last twenty-one consecutive matches.
The Trentino coach will have to do without only setter Lavia, replaced on the roster by baby Giani. The team will complete its preparation for the match with today’s lunchtime practice and Sunday morning’s finishing practice. The match will coincide with match number 1,103 in the history of Trentino Volleyball in the men’s division, the 506th in its own facility (balance of 402 wins and 103 losses) where the Yellowoblù have not lost for 391 days (last knockout with Perugia itself, on October 27, 2024), the 622nd in the regular season, the 34th of the current calendar year.
Sir Susa Scai Perugia comes to Trento with an enviable roster behind it in this first part of the championship; the home tie break loss to Verona the previous weekend did not cause it to lose its top spot in the standings, a position that is worth so much having already faced four of the top five pursuers in the standings (in addition to the Scaligeri, also Modena, Civitanova and Piacenza). The statistics of this league start certify the goodness of the record of the Block Devils, who are among the most incisive in the break point phase thanks to wall (60 the winners – 2.07 per partial, no one does better) and serve (1.41 aces per fraction). Compared to last season, the team has not changed its starting lineup one iota, however, shoring up the roster with additional valuable grafts such as young director Argilagos (already a key player in the successes over Piacenza and Cuneo), center Crosato, Croatian opposite Cvanciger, libero Gaggini and universal Džavoronok (47 games with Trento in the 2022/23 season), who further swell the lineup of former duty players, headed by coach Angelo Lorenzetti (337 appearances on the Gialloblù bench between 2016 and 2023) and also composed of Simone Giannelli (315 official matches between 2014 and 2021 and 131 times captain), Sebastian Solé (189 tokens between 2013 and 2017) and Massimo Colaci (345 between 2010 and 2017).
The two clubs have already faced each other fifty-seven times in official matches in five different competitions (league, Coppa Italia, Supercup, Champions League and World Club Championship); the balance sheet smiles on the Block Devils 32-25 thanks to fourteen victories in the last eighteen confrontations, but Itas Trentino secured the only previous one in the calendar year 2025: a 3-2 success in Umbria on January 12 in the sign of Michieletto (22 points) and Bartha (17). The most frequently occurring result is Perugia’s four-set victory (sixteen out of fifty-seven matches, including four in Trento-including the last one, on Oct. 27), but the hosts have retained the home court factor in sixteen of the twenty-four home matches played against the Umbrians. The last Gialloblù victory at PalaTrento against Sir was on December 17, 2023. The player who has played the most Trento-Perugia matches is Simone Giannelli, who has experienced 34 with the Gialloblù jersey and 18 with the Umbrian one (total of 52).
