Women's Volleyball FIVB World Championship 2025

[George_D 1,473]

The road to the final

 

[heywoodu 15,997]

10 minutes ago, George_D said:

The road to the final

 

Awesome to have this new format now instead of going from groups to....another group and only then a knock-out. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more professional and serious for some reason, and way easier to follow  

[hoversaBR 613]

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

Awesome to have this new format now instead of going from groups to....another group and only then a knock-out. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more professional and serious for some reason, and way easier to follow  

To be perfect, they just need to stop favoring the host countries. Japan, ranked only 7th in the world, has an easier path (or should have if Serbia hadn't fallen in the rankings) than Italy, the best team in the world. The same goes for Brazil and Poland in the men's competition, respectively.

[hoversaBR 613]

 3-2  

[Federer91 3,020]

On 8/27/2025 at 10:28 PM, heywoodu said:

Awesome to have this new format now instead of going from groups to....another group and only then a knock-out. Makes the whole thing feel a lot more professional and serious for some reason, and way easier to follow  

Agree, though i think having groups of only 4, makes the group stage a bit pointless. There are only a handful of matches with clear implications about passing the group stage. Each group always has a big favourite that never loses and a big outsider that almost never wins. Which leads to only the match between the second and third seeds as a direct battle for qualification. And some groups didn't even have this battle, as the top 2 teams were much better than third and fourth one. I think groups of 6 is a better format, but it can't have a clear path to the eliminations, if they insist on the expanded number of teams.

[heywoodu 15,997]

10 hours ago, Federer91 said:

Agree, though i think having groups of only 4, makes the group stage a bit pointless. There are only a handful of matches with clear implications about passing the group stage. Each group always has a big favourite that never loses and a big outsider that almost never wins. Which leads to only the match between the second and third seeds as a direct battle for qualification. And some groups didn't even have this battle, as the top 2 teams were much better than third and fourth one. I think groups of 6 is a better format, but it can't have a clear path to the eliminations, if they insist on the expanded number of teams.

The larger number of teams is the bigger issue I think in a relatively small sport. Having 4 groups of 4 might be more sensible. For me the main objectives should be as follows:

 

- Groups, then KO (and no second group format)

- Top-X in every group goes to the KO stage, no spots for "best 3rd/4th placed teams" because that is by definition an unfair comparison

 

So in the end we should end up with either 8 or 16 teams that get out of the group stage. Could also have 8 groups of 3

[Henry_Leon 1,586]

 3 - 0   

[vinipereira 3,460]

I like the format but not the spacing between matches. For Brazil it will be five days since their last match...

[Monzanator 4,768]

Even Polish media are quiet on upset medal chances. We hardly impressed at these champs and stand no chance vs Italy if we beat Belgium. I mean Germany blew like 3 MP when they had ball in the air to spike it. So as a reward they got trounced by Italy in R16.

[Monzanator 4,768]

First set Belgium. Poland led 16-12 and lost 25-27.