Apuania Carrara won 2021 Italian Super Cup. In the Sports Hall of Carrara in the presence of the Italian Federation President Renato Di NAPOLI they beat the usual opponents of Top Spin Messina Fontalba 5-1 and raised the trophy for the first time in their history guided by the President Guglielmo BELLOTTI.
The match was played on two tables best of nine matches. Russia’s Aleksander SHIBAEV and the Croatia’s Andrej GACINA was the main force in the local team led on the bench by the coach Claudio VOLPI and the manager Alessandro MERCIADRI. They gave a good start overcoming respectively Ukraine’s Yaroslav ZHMUDENKO in straight games and Portugal’s João MONTEIRO in four.
After that GACINA achieved second win (3-0) over ZHMUDENKO and Marco RECH DALDOSSO accounted for Mihai BOBOCICA 3-1 the two following matches allowed Apuania Carrara to complete the job. BOBOCICA defeated MONTEIRO 3-1 with the last two games on the razor’s edge and then SHIBAEV recovered from 2-0 down against an excellent RECH DALDOSSO and came back again in the final and decisive game to cross the finish line with his hands up .
Coach Wang Hong Liang’s side deserved an applause because despite the defeat they fought hard till the last point.
“I am very happy ” comments Bobocica. “This is important victory because we got it against the one of the strongest team in the Italian league. It is never easy to play against them as they are very competitive and therefore we are very satisfied. The race for the title in the national championship will certainly be very exciting and we and Top Spin will play on equal terms as we did today”.
Aleksander SHIBAEV – Yaroslav ZHMUDENKO 3-0 (11-9 11-9 11-9)
Andrej GACINA – João MONTEIRO 3-1 (3-11 12-10 11-2 11-7)
Mihai BOBOCICA – Marco RECH DALDOSSO 1-3 (8-11 12-10 7-11 11-13)
Andrej GACINA – Yaroslav ZHMUDENKO 3-0 (11-8 12-10 11-5)
Aleksander SHIBAEV – Marco RECH DALDOSSO 3-2 (10-12 7-11 11-8 11-5 11-8)
Mihai BOBOCICA – João MONTEIRO 3-1 (6-11 11-5 13-11 12-10)
