Women’s VNL teams regroup in Brazil and the Philippines

After a week’s rest, the women’s Volleyball Nations League 2022 returns to action as the world’s best 16 teams regroup in Brazil and the Philippines for their second week of matches, starting on Tuesday, June 14, and ending on Sunday, June 19.

· Watch all VNL 2022 matches live on Volleyball TV.

The pool in Quezon City will be the first to get underway with a game between ninth-placed Canada and seventh-placed Thailand. The Asian team made headlines in Week 1 with unexpected victories over Bulgaria, Serbia and China in Ankara. This week’s opening match will start at 15:00 local time (07:00 GMT).

That pool also features the top three teams in the current standings, Japan (4-0 win-loss ratio), China (3-1) and USA (3-1), in addition to three European teams – Poland (3-1), Belgium (1-3) and Bulgaria (1-3).

2022 FIVB Volleyball World Championship co-hosts Poland will try to claim a fourth win and slow down undefeated Japan as the two teams lock horns in Tuesday’s second fixture. Bulgaria and defending champions USA will try to get back on the winning track as they cross ways in Wednesday’s first match. Later that day, tournament’s leading scorer Britt Herbots will try to lead Belgium to success against Asian powerhouse China.

An array of interesting games will follow this week, with some of the clashes to look out for including Poland v USA on Friday, an all-Asian battle between Japan and Thailand later the same day, Saturday’s titanic duel between USA and China and, of course, Sunday’s closing game between rivals Japan and China in another edition of the all-time Asian classic.

The week after Brasilia welcomed a men’s VNL pool, the Brazilian capital will also host 16 matches in the women’s competition. The programme will open with an all-European encounter between neighbours Germany, standing 11th on a 1-3 win-loss ratio, and the Netherlands, 14th on 0-4. That game starts at 18:00 local time (21:00 GMT) on Tuesday. Three hours later, Serbia will have their first chance to get back at Italy, after losing last year’s European Championship final in Belgrade.

Hosts Brazil, currently sixth in the table, and fourth-placed Türkiye (VNL 2021 silver and bronze medalists, respectively), will go head to head in a thrilling duel to open their week in Brasilia on Wednesday. Winless Dominican Republic and Korea are the other two teams in the pool. One of the two teams will surely put a stop to their negative series as they meet each other on Wednesday.

Another episode of a match-up that has turned into one of women’s volleyball’s most exciting rivalries in recent years, between Balkan powers Serbia and Türkiye, will take place on Friday, while Saturday’s programme will open with a clash between European champions Italy and South American champions Brazil that is sure to fill up the stands in Brasilia. Then on Sunday morning, the home team will have another high-profile meeting, this time with world champions Serbia.

This will be the second of three competition weeks in the women’s Preliminary Round. All matches count towards the general standings, which will determine the seven teams to join hosts Türkiye at the Finals in Ankara from July 13 through 17.

After the first 32 matches in the men’s VNL, played last week in Brasilia and Ottawa, USA are the only team to have gone through the week unharmed, taking the lead with a 4-0 win-loss record and 11 points. They lost a single point along the way, in their five-set encounter with Japan, who also suffered their only damage in that match to stand second in the table on 3-1 and 10 points. The Americans took three points each from Slovenia, the Netherlands and Brazil, while Japan scored victories over the Netherlands, China and Iran.

Another four teams with 3-1 records – Olympic champions France, world champions Poland, European champions Italy and Germany – follow down the standings table, in that order.

In what was probably the most surprising result of the week, China stunned hosts Brazil in Brasilia in a hard-fought three-setter, their only win of the tournament so far. These two teams feature the best scorers of the week, Brazil’s Alan Souza with 78 points and China’s Jingyin Zhang with 76.

Brazil finished the week in eighth place, behind the Netherlands and ahead of Serbia, Slovenia and Iran. Each of these five teams won two and lost two games during the week. Argentina, China and Canada are next down the standings with a victory each, while winless Bulgaria and Australia complete the table.

Poland finished the week as the number one ranked team in the world, moving ahead of Brazil, while China made the highest upward jump of five positions to number 17 in the FIVB Men’s Volleyball World Ranking.