The Polish “Project Warsaw”, which includes Ukrainian volleyball player Yuriy Semenyuk, achieved one of the most unique victories in the Champions League. The Polish team defeated the Italian “Trentino” in six (!) sets.
“Project Warsaw” and “Trentino” reached the playoff round of the Champions League based on the results of the group stage. Moreover, the Ukrainian team also reached there as the best third place.
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Project Warsaw lost the first match to Trentino at home in a tiebreaker. Therefore, the Polish team only needed a win to advance to the next round: a 3:0 or 3:1 score in sets would have put them straight into the next round, while a tiebreaker win would have meant the teams had to play another “golden” set, which would have been the sixth in this match.
First, the teams took the game to a second consecutive tiebreak in the match. “Project Warsaw” won the first set, after which “Trentino” responded by taking the next two, but could not avoid the fifth game – 25:21 in set #4.
In the tiebreak, Trentino almost managed to close the three-point gap that the volleyball players of the Warsaw Project had created for themselves, but in the end, the Polish team regained this advantage and won 15:12. And in the “golden”, sixth set, Yuriy Semenyuk's team put an end to it, winning with a score of 15:11.
The MVP of the match was Yuriy Semenyuk, who finished the game with 15 points, five of which came on blocks. The most productive player, however, was Trentino's diagonal Theo Faure, who scored 34 points (56 in total in two games against Project Warsaw).
“It was a very difficult match. We gave everything we had and, I think, we deservedly received this reward – we reached the quarterfinals,” the Ukrainian volleyball player said after the game.
Have there been any 6-set matches in the Volleyball Champions League before?
This is the fifth match in the Men's Volleyball Champions League to be decided in six sets since the 2020/21 season. The last time this happened was in the previous season, when Lüneburg defeated Berlin in the German derby.
In total, Trentino played a 6-set match for the fifth time in the Champions League playoff stage. And it was the second time they lost: in the 2022/23 season they lost to the Polish “Zaksa”, although the year before they had passed another Italian team, “Perugia”.
Results of the last five 6-set matches in the Men's Volleyball Champions League
- 2025/26: Trentino (Italy) — Project Warsaw (Poland) 3:2, 2:3 — Project Warsaw win
- 2024/25: “Lüneburg” (Germany) – “Berlin” (Germany) 3:2, 2:3 – “Lüneburg” won
- 2022/23: “Zaksa” (Poland) – “Trentino” (Italy) 3:2, 2:3 – victory of “Zaksa”
- 2021/22: Perugia (Italy) — Trentino (Italy) 2:3, 3:2 — Trentino win
- 2020/21: Zenit (Russia) — Zaksa (Poland) 2:3, 3:2 — Zaksa wins
For “Project Warsaw” this is the second quarterfinal in a row in the Champions League. In the next round, Yuriy Semenyuk's team will play in the Polish derby against LUK Lublin.