The vacancy of the head coach of Russian men’s volleyball national team has finally been filled while it has surprised the world with a foreign face- 43-year-old Finnish coach of Kemerovo Kuzbass Tuomas Sammelvuo.
Statement of Stanislav Shevchenko, President of the Volleyball Federation of Russia (VFV), on the appointment:
– On the eve of the VFV Presidium, the Expert Council presented the programs of four coaches – Tuomas Sammelvuo, Alexander Klimkin, Serbian Slobodan Kovac and Italian Lorenzo Bernardi. After a lengthy discussion, two candidates were submitted to the Presidium – Sammelvuo and Klimkin. Then an exchange of views of the members of the Presidium took place, a vote was passed, Sammelvuo was chosen by a majority of votes. Of course, the decision of the Presidium was influenced by how well the Finnish specialist in the Kemerovo Kuzbass, his decency and devotion to volleyball work. Let me remind you that Sammelvuo is also familiar with the realities of our volleyball (Russian league) as a player.
Tuomas SAMMELVUO
Born on February 16, 1976. He played for various clubs in Finland, the French “Strasbourg”, “Poitiers” and “Tour”, the Italian “Cuneo”, “Piacenza”, “Vibo-Valentia”, “Perugia”, the Polish “Kendzejin Kozle”, the Japanese “Toyoda Goei” , Russian teams Dinamo-Yantar (Kaliningrad) and Lokomotiv (Novosibirsk). He played in the Finnish national team from 1993 to 2010. After his playing career in the 2012/13 season, in January 2013 he was appointed head coach of the Finnish national team. Since 2016, he began to preside as the head coach of Kuzbass Kemerovo at the same time. Now his team is as close as possible to reaching the EKB Cup final.
Sammelvuo is a multi-lingual coach, fluent in Russian, in addition to his native Finnish, also English, Italian and Japanese. We are looking forward to seeing how the chemistry works between the Russian team players and his coaching team.
