France and Slovenia are two of the fastest-rising teams in men’s volleyball, having both earned their most significant results within the last decade. The French have been the most successful of the two, with Olympic and European titles and VNL medals to their name, and it feels like every time Slovenia were on their way to a breakthrough result, France were the ones to knock them out of the competition. That was the case last year in the VNL, when the Slovenians were denied their first podium appearance by the French in the bronze medal match, and in the final of the 2015 European Championship, when the reigning Olympic champions forced their opponents to settle for silver. Slovenia’s first-ever Olympic appearance also didn’t materialise in great part because of the French, who defeated them twice in two different qualifiers.
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