The 2011 FIVB World League starts today - Volleyball latest news
Finally, the wait is over and the exciting international 2011 Federation International de Volleyball (FIVB) Men’s Volleyball World League is set to take centre stage today. On Friday, May 27, sixteen of the best teams from around the world will hit the courts.
Teams from Argentina, USA, Brazil, Serbia, Bulgaria, Russia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Finland, Poland, France, Korea, Germany, Japan and Italy have qualified for the 2011 FIVB World League. FIVB organised different qualification tournaments among various
teams of the world that took place on various continents and finally picked out 16 contenders for the final competition.
The grid of sixteen teams has been divided into four pools named Pool A, Pool B, Pool C and Pool D.
The tournament will kick off with the first preliminary round-robin, which will complete its run from May 27 to July 1. This round is also regarded as the Intercontinental round as the teams from different continents get a chance to compete against each
other. According to the set formula of competition, each team will have two matches against the same team on separate days during the week. Every team will appear in 12 matches and a total of 96 matches will be played among all teams of the 2011 FIVB World
League in this particular round.
The FIVB has designed the competition in such order that teams will get the chance of playing three rounds of the game on home courts, while the remaining three rounds will be played away from home. Only Japan and Cuba are exceptions in this case. Japan
was struck by a severe natural disaster two months ago and they are not in a position to host the matches at home. Likewise, the island of Cuba is also busy renovating their national stadium and do not have the available courts for games.
After the successful completion of the Intercontinental round, the competition will enter the influential Final Round. The polish city of Gdansk has been confirmed as the host of the Final Round, which will be played over a span of five days. The Final round
will be played from July 6 to10th. The Pool winners and second-position teams of the preliminaries will advance to the final round, while Poland will automatically be promoted to Final Round for being the host.
N.B. Poland will be included in the 8-team group of the final round, even if they finish the preliminary round below the top two in the pool.
In the Final Round, teams will be divided into two pools; Pool E and Pool F. Following the same pattern, the top two teams of each pool will enter the “final four” stage. Two semi-final games will define the finalists of the 2011 FIVB World League. Eventually,
the final showdown of the tournament will be staged and the champion team will be revealed.
Brazil had the honour of finishing in the top slot last year and are looking forward to defending their title this year.
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