Plock, Poland, November 29, 2018 - FIVB Volleyball Men's Club World Championship Pool A leaders Cucine Lube Civitanova and Fakel Novy Urengoy meet in Plock on Thursday.
Head-to-Head· Fakel Novy Urengoy and Cucine Lube Civitanova meet for the first time at the Club World Championship.
· Lube play a Russian side for the third time at the Club World Championship, after a 3-0 defeat against Zenit Kazan in last year's final and a 3-2 victoryversus Zenit in this year's group stage.
· Lube have lost their last five Champions League meetings with teams from Russia.
Fakel Novy Urengoy· Fakel Novy Urengoy have won their first two matches of the 2018 Club World Championship in five sets, against Zenit-Kazan and PGE Skra Belchatow.
· Fakel's contest against PGE Skra on Tuesday consisted of a total of 248 points (126-122), a record at the Club World Championship. The previous high was 243 points in the Trentino v UPCN match in 2014.
· Fakel have two five-set wins in as many Club World Championship matches. As of 27 November, among this year's participating teams, only Trentino Volley (5 of 34 total Club World Championship matches) and PGE Skra (3 of 22) have more (Lube 2 of 7).
· Egor Kliuka scored a match-high 28 points against PGE Skra. Dmitry Volkov (20) was their other player to pass the 20-point mark.
Cucine Lube Civitanova· Cucine Lube Civitanova won their first two matches of the 2018 Club World Championship - 3-1 v PGE Skra Belchatow and 3-2 v Zenit-Kazan. They beat Kazan after being 10-14 down in the final set.
· In 2017, their only previous Club World Championship campaign, Lube won their first four matches in the competition before losing 3-0 to Zenit-Kazan in the final. This was Lube's only defeat at the Club World Championship to date.
· Tsvetan Sokolov scored a team-high 20 points for Lube against Zenit-Kazan. Points-wise, Lube and Kazan were perfectly balanced with 113 points each.
· Robertlandy Simón Aties was the only Lube player to score at least one point from spikes (13), blocks (4) and serves (1) against Zenit.