LJUBLJANA – The Slovenian men’s national team did an excellent job in the first two tournaments of the Volleyball Nations League. Next week, they will play in the Philippines to confirm their place in the playoffs.
Slovenia has played in Nagoya, Japan, and Orleans, France tournaments in the past few weeks. They returned from both with three wins and one loss. On their way, they won against the Serbs, the French, the Iranians, the Argentines, the Canadians, and the Cubans. Still, they had to concede superiority to the Bulgarians and the Brazilians.
After eight of the 12 matches of the first part of the League of Nations, Slovenia occupies a high fourth place and is well on its way to once again securing a place among the group, which awaits the quarter-final matches at the final tournament in Gdansk, Poland, in the second half of July.
The Poles, who are directly qualified for the playoffs, will be the first rivals of the Slovenians in Pasay City in the Philippines. The match will is scheduled for Wednesday, July 5, at 1 p.m. Central Europe time. There will be matches with China and Italy in the next two days. The first will start at 1 p.m., and the second just 20 hours later. After the rest day, on Sunday, the Slovenian volleyball players will face the Netherlands, which they had eliminated twice already in the preparatory matches before the start of the VNL. Sunday’s game will be broadcast again at 9 a.m.
“There will be a long journey ahead of us. We have to keep a calm head and stay focused. New matches await us, with which we will collect points for the world ranking and, of course, to secure a place at the final tournament in Gda?sk,” said the head coach Gheorghe Cretu at the beginning and continued:
“Only the cream of the best teams in the world compete in the VNL. Regardless of who is standing on the other side of the net, Slovenia can defeat all of them with the right focus”.
Volleyball players are also well aware of what matches in Philipinnes can bring them. “We expect everyone to come to the Philippines optimally prepared and, just like us, try to secure the last points to advance to the final tournament. The most important thing in the matches will be to play them with the highest possible degree of concentration,” said Klemen Cebulj.
Ziga Stern also did a lot of work at the last tournament in France, and I also emphasized that everything will depend on the Slovenian team itself. “In the Philippines, matches with the world’s volleyball superpowers await us. But first of all, we must do everything to be the ones who will show everything we can on the court. If that happens, I believe we have nothing to fear”, he said.
The success of the performances in the Philippines will not only count for the Nations League standings, where Japan is at the top without defeat, followed by the USA with seven wins, with the same amount of revenue, but one point more than Slovenia, and Brazil in the third place. Each match also brings or takes away points in the world volleyball ranking, which next summer will be the criterion for awarding the last tickets to the Olympic Games to teams that will not secure a place at Olympic Games Paris 2024 through the qualifications. Slovenia maintained its position in the ranking but came much closer to the climb. It is less than a point and a half behind seventh-placed Argentina.
