Posts by Polish96

Finally round 2 starts today So many good matches and I don't know how I will watch all of the games I want to watch. Two wins should 100% qualify us for the final 6 too, but I think if we lose today against Argentina, it will be hard to bouce back against France and Serbia.

And maybe Polish (Polsat TV) commentators will finally stop complaining about everything, too Because this year I am seriously tired of their attitude. Evertything about this tournament sucks to them... the level is awful (Apparently, we should keep some teams from participating in the qualifications), the refereeing is abysmall, the competition system is stupid (Although it's basically the same system used in 2014 World Championship, with some small alterations), the schedule is dumb...basically they think volleyball would be better if there would be 12-16 teams participating in the World Championships, and obviously hosted by Poland, because some gut from the FIVB said after the previous WC told them that "all future events should be hosted with such a grace as in poland"

Well, but that's generally a problem with our experts in volleyball...year after year Polish fans hear that "this sport is dying and needs drastic reforms", and said reforms usually involve replacing most of the people in CEV or FIVB with people from "more appropiate countries (read: Poland)" ,Somehow I never got the answer when I asked why do more teams like Canada, Slovenia, Germany or Iran keep showing up lately, if the level of the sport is so awful worldwide and why (not counting Football, as it's obvious) did Volleyball become the 2nd biggest team sport after basketball in the planet,according to data from Google Trends.
(link for the interested: https://trends.google.pl/trend…%2Fm%2F0crlz,%2Fm%2F03tmr )

NETHERRLAAAAAAANNNNNDS

Bartosz Kwolek will start todays game as a Libero I hope the coach has a plan, and it's not simply disregarding Cuba's level.

Dominican Republic 1-0 Slovenia, what a return after 48 years!

Cameroon-Tunisia 3:0

And meanwhile in Bari, Cameron leads 2-0 against Tunisia...I hope they can repeatr their small success from 2010

Quote from YavorD

So what are you suggesting - to have all tournaments only in Poland and Brazil every two years and ignore all others? This IS the way to promote volleyball and we will have to endure a few empty halls, I am afraid. I know you guys from Poland would usually complain a lot about attendance elsewhere, but I guess we can live with some other countries hosting a huge event once, let's say, every 50 years. At least I can do. It's not like Bulgaria would get the chance to host as big an event as this one anytime soon. And we've seen empty halls for non-hosts matches also in the VNL and other events, this is a long topic and we've had it before.

For the stats, it wasn't much better with the earlier matches in Japan back in 2006, at least in some of the groups, although the halls were way bigger and could accommodate a few more eager, early spectators.

For the sake of being thorough with the information, there are 3 other factors that contribute to attendance when the host is not playing. First, teams like Finland, Estonia, Poland, etc., would make up for some empty seats because of their travelling fans which, unfortunately, isn't the case with either France or China. Or maybe with any of the teams in Russe. Second, there are 3 ongoing WCHs in Bulgaria right now (the other two are Rowing and Gymnastics), which wasn't a very fortunate situation, of course. Third but not least, I can't say prices are very affordable and help promote volleyball in the way we all desire. Naturally here is the Bulgarian Federation to blame.

This is also the only day with early matches during the entire tournament, so let's hope it gets a bit better.

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I absolutely am not suggesting we host the big tournaments only in Brazil or Poland In fact, one of the problems I have with FIVB is they keep pushing the tournaments, whether it's the World Championship, World League, Club World Championship to the "Big" volleyball countries, exactly like you said. I mean, Japan will host the Women's edition for the 3rd time in 12 years.They also hosted the men's World Championship in 2006 and constantly host the World Cup. I think that's definitely too much,no matter ho much people in Japan love volley.

If Poland would actually get another Men's World or European Championship tournament in the next few years... well this would just prove how corrupt the FIVB/CEV are. Even here the interest would be lower, and even I feel the massive ammount of home matches we are getting lately slowly makes the matches of our team... boring.

I am,in fact, very in favor of hosting the tournaments in new countries. But, sorry to say, I don't see any interest for volleyball in Bulgaria unless it is somehow tied with their national team.

You say that the 2006 world Championship had a weak attendance, and it is sort of true, but stil the games were played early too, and with some (Notable) exceptions they managed to get a decent turnout for such early hour, even if the teams playing were not amongst the top.

Some examples:
Iran vs Venezuela -14:00 Local Time, 18.11 - attendance 2.100
Argentina vs Poland - 13:00 Local Time, 19.11 - attendance 3.892
USA vs Czech Rep. 14:00 Local Time, 19.11 - attendance 2.150

There were some lesser watched matches played at the same time (The worst that I found had around 700 spectators, so maybe we will have similar here, I hope) but I am talking about the general trend I noticed lately.

Heck, 2002 Argentinian World Championship had matches played at even crazier hour, and even better attendance:

Portugal vs China, 11:00 Local Time, 29.09, attendance 3.200
Japan vs Spain, 11:10 Local Time, 30.09, attendance 3.400
Yugoslavia vs Japan, 11:10 Local Time, 01.10, attendance 4.700

Even looking at, say, European Championship, the matches played in Austria , which is far less interested in volleyball had over 1.000 spectators each (with the exception of Slovenia-Turkey group stage match, which had 500).

Once again: I am not trying to be rude, I am just stating what I noticed during Euro 2015 and was reminded of today - Bit seems to me that Bulgarians love volleyball, have some of the world's greatest fans - but only when they NT is playing. I hope I am wrong, that the attendance will be better at later matches, but the matches in Varna 3 years ago were played at better time (17:30 or 20:00) and still did not manage to get attention of fans.

I am just sad, because there are too many (mostly football) fans in Poland that are like "Hahaha, noone cares about those Championships even in the host countries) and this just proves them right.

It's so nice to see a sold-out crowd in Ruse

Seriously, I know it's early, but are there more than 400-500 people in the stadium? I doubt it. This might as well be the worst watched match in the known World Championship history And many of the spectators are just school kids, who probably got free tickets much earlier.

The same happened 3 years ago during the Euros in Varna, where the most watched game (Poland vs. Slovenia) had 1.000 spectators, and the average per match in the group was 592 spectators, and the game between Slovenia and Belarus only had 250 people in attendance....

I don't want to sound rude, but if this trend continues on other non-Bulgarian matches, I don't think Bulgaria should host any more worldwide tournaments for a long time.

I mean, this is the World Championship, it should advertise and promote volley, and instead we get this...

Sweden 4 years ago they almost qualified,now they lose 2-3 against LUXEMBOURG, which has only 1 proffesional player

Latvia eliminated

What an atmosphere in the match Latvia-Estonia... Over 5000 fans And the Latvians doesn't seem to be majority at all Great to see Estonia loves volley

Quote from Padar

Macedonia is trash, they have absolutely zero sportsmanship whatsoever. Shame on them, shame on CEV.

Did they do something again?

Sweden

Sweden End of the dreams of qualification for them I think.... Poor Markus.

Denmark lost against Georgia

Quote from saishuu

Was it the same moment as this? https://www.facebook.com/SiteM…07410&notif_t=video_reply

The Macedonian guy pulled the net and Hungary was robbed a point. That guy should at least be suspended from the sport.

No,although this situation is even more awful...The one I speak of happened in 3rd set, somewhere about 20-20 in points, perhaps a bit earlier.

Quote from andrea

What did he do to earn this gift from the referee?

He grabbed the net in an attempt to tear it down It happened somewhere about the end of 3rd set,

Quote from StefanS

I think, Iceland is not up to the task even playing in qualfication here. CEV should set minimum standards for this kind of participation IMHO. Final result -4,-8,-10, this was a massacre, not a match.

Well, how are they supposed to improve otherwise? Look at football, even there the stronger teams have to play matches against San Marino or Andorra, which may not be very exciting but are necessary to grow as a sport. I think this new qualification system is pretty good, similar to what we have in football, and gives everyone an equal chance.

Moldova 3-2 Montenegro

Surprises everywhere that shouldn't be THAT surprising After all home advantage can be a GREAT advantage, and the previous qualification system (with one country hosting the whole tournament) was very unfair. I think now we get to see the real quality of the weaker teams.