Wow this is disgusting! Both Gianni and the dumbass who actually listens to him
And a few moments later Chinnanyeze got a knee injury and was taken off.
2025 Men's Volleyball World Championship
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Just because it has always been the norm, it should be done same way in the future too🤦 there is no justification to favor a team so ridiculously. This most of the times give them a free tickets to top 16 which is unfair. Luckily Philippines couldn't even manage that 😂
Let's get one thing straight: the Philippines had no earthly business winning a set from anyone in their pool. This is a team that can't even snag a medal against their own neighbors in Southeast Asia, so they were basically a free pass for Iran and Egypt. And yet, here we are. Maybe all that "extra adrenaline" from the crowd worked its magic, but things happened that absolutely shouldn't have. The rest of the pools are pretty balanced, you know, for those teams that actually belong there— exceptions are Pool E and maybe Pool H.
Honestly, Finland beating France? Serbia somehow toppling Brazil? And don't even get me started on Portugal upsetting Cuba. There are always upsets, but this isn't an upset, it's a full-on collapse of expectations, and frankly, it's embarrassing.
And then there's Turkiye, a team that has made a name for itself as a consistent bottom-dweller in the VNL. But what do you know? Here they are, somehow clawing their way into the round of 16. The audacity.
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Im fine weaker countries being host but they shouldn't be seeded as number 1. Look at group A, it is ridiculous🤦 also teams shouldn't be matched with their group-mates in quarters. Even if some of the groups are unbalanced in strength, they should be mixed in a way that both qualified teams should be able to go to finals together, at least theocratically. With this approach, fivb would nullify the risk of unbalanced group pairings
honestly it wouldn't even be that hard to fix it.
If the host is a team outside of the top 8, give them the 8 seed like they already do in beach competitions. This doesn't impact any of the top 4 seeds and won't have 1 and 2 on the same side of the knockouts. It would affect 5-9 seeds... but they'd already have to play/beat a top 4 team anyways, it just changes which one it is (which honestly I'd like to see FIVB approach this with more randomness... like they do in tennis... to prevent fixed draws, which I find lame, but thats personal preference)
If they're in the top 8, just give them the seed that they've earned.
Unbalanced groups can be solved by having crossover (either in an additional pool or in 1A not facing 2A in the quarters/etc)
Pools can be re-balanced by seeding after the VNL (which some people may not like.... but it would give a more balanced effort than seeding like what, a year? in advance that this event did lol)
FIVB just loves to choose to be the worst.
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Just because it has always been the norm, it should be done same way in the future too🤦 there is no justification to favor a team so ridiculously. This most of the times give them a free tickets to top 16 which is unfair. Luckily Philippines couldn't even manage that 😂
I get it. Pool A is too imbalanced and our team certainly benefited from that and I agee with your point that the host team should not be automatically top seeded. Sure, Philippines aren't strong as the other teams but they also did their best to put up a good performance against their opponents, even winning 1 match and almost winning their last one (IMO, this made them look not as weak as I thought they should be but yes, still weak). Because really, I have no expectations from this team and even expected them to just be completely dominated. It's already an achievement to participate in such a prestigious tournament and gain experience because our players are just too limited.
Objectively, I think the reasons Philippines did "suprisingly well" boils down to
1. Pool A being the easiest (let's face it. If any mid-level or top team would be in this pool, Philippines won't win a single match)
2. Egypt and Iran making tons of mistakes
3. Filipino players pushing themselves beyond their limits
4. Home crowd support -
The biggest problem for me is teams from the same group meeting in the quarterfinals to advance from the round of 16.
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And a few moments later Chinnanyeze got a knee injury and was taken off.
Lol karma is doing overtime sometimes😂
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The biggest problem for me is teams from the same group meeting in the quarterfinals to advance from the round of 16.
Yes there's literally zero logic in that formula. It isn't even fun to make to teams to play against each other twice unless it is a final
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I guess this tournament ends any discussions whether male or female volleyball is more 'competitive' and unpredictable considering what has been happening since the beginning of this event: male teams have just much better depth, especially in terms of being able to upset superior teams on daily basis.
Re: formula - that's why it works much better in case of male event, the depth is just much better to make pool phase entertaining. Obviously, it's an outlier to see that many upsets, but these European teams like Bulgaria, Belgium, Turkey or Finland on paper even prior to the event showed that they can be very competitive - and they were outside of top16 in the FIVB rankings before the event.
Whether it is fair or not is to be honest more dependent on the Philippines getting 1st seeding, if that wasn't the case, we wouldn't see that big disparity between upper and lower half of the bracket, and so on - that's the worst part of it.
Re: unfair - naah, I don't think e.g. Brazil was unlucky considering that they found themselves in this upper half with highway open to make a final. They had Czechia, Serbia, Iran and Tunisia to make it to the semifinals phase, let's be real, that was laughable, so I don't think they are any victims, besides circumstances of Bernardinho's mother passing. But to be honest - they were already pretty awful against China in the opening match.
ps
Yeah, it can be easily improved, I have no idea why the bracket looks the way it does, why we have to see Czechia-Serbia rematch in the QF, lol.
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Oh no, what a horrible camera angle
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Fun start! Both teams with great service pressure, and while Turkiye has more fire power in attack but I think NL might have a slight defensive/"smart plays" advantage. Let's hope both teams can keep errors down and it will be a good match
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Berkhout thinking Koops is 3m tall with those sets above the net
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Why not just sub-out mandıracı when he was 2/11 and 4 errors just try gökçen, i guess kovac didnt want to lose serve pressure
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Why not just sub-out mandıracı when he was 2/11 and 4 errors just try gökçen, i guess kovac didnt want to lose serve pressure
Yeah Efe needs to start playing her real game, we can't win this game with only adis
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Turkey seems more consistent overall. They always struggle with nerves to stay focused and make silly mistakes.
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what a shame they are going to end the summer with this game, because what a mess is this. We found our vnl form again i guess :-/
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Was a huge mistake of Banks to keep Plak on the bench.
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Was a huge mistake of Banks to keep Plak on the bench.
i would not be suprised if he has some type of issue/ a small injury. He was sitting down the whole time when he went of court and did not look comfortable. A previous game he was supposed to start and all of a sudden did not and only came in later.
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Was a huge mistake of Banks to keep Plak on the bench.
Tbh it looked like he walked behind the Turkiye bench after he got subbed in set 1, so it made me wonder if maybe he's not feeling well
I was only able to watch sets 1-2 but just saw 15-8 on livescore and decided it was over, until I checked again and it was 17-15. What's this mess
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Well, overall the third set was really bad from NL side. Turkey really was the better team today, imo also the first set which we happen to win. Don’t know how.
Dutch commentator was saying something about upset stomachs, maybe it has hit some players harder than others.And typical for the Dutch I think: we played our best match of the summer when nothing was on the table to play for, against Poland three days ago…
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Semeniuk is the MVP of this tournament so far.
His role this season is more crucial than ever. Poland was a weak team at passing is with Zatorski already, but the situation with Popiwczak is even worse. Semeniuk is the one who makes the team consistent, being able to cover a lot of court a giving confidence to the others. Not sure what Popiwczak's stats look like, but he really gives me bad vibes, like I already know he's the weak link of the team.
