VolleyRuller96

Not a lot happened today, the only highlight I can think of is Czech victory over Bulgaria (3-0). It's also worth noticing Egypt won against Mexico also 3-0 and therefore won group C. We can also safely say the top 3 of each group are qualified to next round. Pool A is an exception, because we already know all qualifying teams. POOL A: POOL B: POOL C: POOL D: Sadly, the hosts are the only team confirmed so far that won't play next round, because they played all of their group stage games and still have less points than which currently is placed 4th and still has one more match to play. In Pool B, the last remaining spot will be decided tommorow between and In Pool C and D, there's still a small chance for and to advance instead of and respectively, however both teams would have to win the matches in three sets. would also have to hope that can defeat heavily.

That's true, but at the other hand it is always a bigger motivation for the weaker teams to play against the strongest ones, especially if such nations are the host. I think played very well today and deservedly got a point, we'll see how they perform against other teams. Also this shows that the gap between teams gets smaller (not only in volleyball, in sports like handbal, basketball or hockey surprising results also happen more frequently than they used to) and the sport is evolving.

France after yesterday's incredible performance now a very weak match against Greece

Apparently there is again some confusion regarding technical time-outs. In some host countries there's no breaks after 8th and 16th point, while other countries still kept it in place Oh, CEV...

Czech Republic beat Iran 3-0 and qualified to the next round. That's actually pretty surprising, I thought they would win only against Colombia I also continue to be impressed by Egypt, hopefully their recent successes in junior competitions mean we will finally have a strong African side in volleyball.

View on Brazil from space

Wow, what a scare in set 3 At least we won, but it wasn't nowhere as easy as people thought it would be.

Congratulations to and for winning their respective opening matches Very nice atmosphere in both countries, the stadiums weren't really full but the fans seemed to really enjoy themselves, so I hope this championship will help volleyball to grow in those countries, especially since they just lack one win to advance to eightfinals, which would be a huge success for both nations.

Well, if we're considering Iran, then there's also Canada (they actually won a medal in WL, while Iran didn't), on european level we have Belgium , Germany, France also used to be pretty mediocre comparing to now.. But yeah, I agree that the international calendar is ridiculous.pretty soon the players won't be able to catch a break. I think they should just get rid of World Cup and Grand Champions Cup alltogether (does anyone even watch WGCC?) the same should happen to CEV challenge cup . World league format should be changed - have one year serve as continetal qualification, and the next year should serve as the "final" tournament, with X best teams in the world prequalified and clear promotion/relegation criteria for each continent. Let's be honest, the Nations League is a complete joke that noone takes seriously. Sadly, FIVB apparently thinks pushing this many tournaments is "promoting the sport".

Yeah, I agree... In Men's ECH this kind of makes sense because the level of teams is way more balanced, there's like 10 nations that could fight for a medal ( , , , , , , , potentially or even ), teams like , or are always a threat, and even teams like or made big progress lately. Other sports also increase the number of teams participating in the EC, so volleyball had to do the same in order to not lose the fans. Meanwhile in women's championship even 16 teams was arguably too many, as there is only a handful of good teams. And I don't think any other sport has 24 teams in the European Championship, not even football, so why would CEV do that... Although I must say the level of the matches so far is nowhere as low as I expected. (with vs being the exception)

Also, speaking of attendance, sadly for women's volleyball (with the exception of a few countries) it generally is much lower than for men's, and such is the case for most sports, I think. To put it harshly, I think more people would care to show up if it was the guys who are playing...that's far from fair, but that's just how it is I believe Poland and Turkey will still deliver great atmosphere, and in Slovakia's and Hungary's case I just hope it won't be as bad as during this year's Eurobasket... the poor girls playing in Latvia barely got any audience at all

Still more people than in Poland Well, the time was 14:30 Now, at the Belarus vs Russia game the attendance in Bratislava is pretty decent as for non-host match in women volleyball

We already have first surprise of the competition 3-2

TV Broadcasters:

Cuba vs. Brazil was intense! 3-2 and 27-25 in tie-break Another good day for Africa. Hosts won 3-2 over , and some good news for @thepharoah as defeated 3-1 and is now surely qualified to the next round! In group D, shockingly won 3-1 over

I didn't include football, because it would be the most popular in every country. And it is a map of interest, not of "how good a nation is"

This is how Google's Search Engine Metrics calculate the popularity of some of the Olympic Team Sports for the last 5 years, the results seem pretty realistic, but I wonder what Totallympics users think of their accuracy Some quick side notes: 1) I decided not to include football, because it would surely take the 1st place in 99% of countries 2) This is a list mostly of summer sports, but I also included Ice Hockey, because other not included summer team sports like field hockey turned out to be barely noticable on the graph. 3) For the "Breakdown by sport" part I decided not to included data from smaller countries, because it was more difficult to tell different shades of colors apart. If you're interested, you can check the interactive version here: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?cat=20&date=today 5-y&q=%2Fm%2F018w8,%2Fm%2F03tmr,%2Fm%2F07_53,%2Fm%2F03krj,%2Fm%2F0crlz You can customize time range, check out the results from your own country or any other country (and even from small regions in each nation) Overall pretty interesting tool Info: Time graph - here is a overwiew of how the popularity changed through time. You can easily tell when important competitions took place for each sport, and how it boosted its popularity. To the right is the average popularity each sport enjoyed during the last 5 years. Basketball is easily the most popular sport, then volleyball, then Ice Hockey. Breakdown by region - This shows what sport was the most popular in what country in the last 5 years. Color depth represents advantage of interest over 2nd most popular sport. (I recommend visiting the Google Trends page, because some countries are barely visible on the map. Also, it provides deeper insight - if you hover your mouse over a country, you can get data about all the other sports.) Breakdown by sports - finally here is a series of maps that provides information on how popular the sport is in a given country. Color depth represents popularity - the more deep the color, the more popular is the sport. As I said before, I did not include smaller countries, with low ammount of search info, because it would make it more difficult to view the map. The details on some maps are already hard to notice... Once again, I suggest clicking the link to get more in-depth information. BASKETBALL ICE HOCKEY VOLLEYBALL HANDBALL WATER POLO

3-2 3-0

Poor it seems despite their talent they are somewhat cursed in volleyball, the levels of bad luck historically surrounding their NT is just absurd... I sincerely hope they can bounce back in the EQT, it would be a shame not to seee them in Tokyo. We'll probably see instead of one of the european giants in Tokyo... but in their defense, I think they aren't as bad as they seem at first glance, I think they are currently a better team than

Leon is amazing and we played two really great matches, hopefully tommorow we will be able to win 1 set and secure our place in Tokyo 2020 Still, I feel bad for Slovenia and France, the schedule for our tournament is really questionable and unfair (and, unfortunately, our Volleyball Association proudly admitted that it was purposely created in Poland's favor and to limit other teams' training opportunities, and Michał "Silver Tongue" Kubiak explained that "We can do this, because we paid money to host.") It is a bit shameful, because this is the only tournament the hosts so clearly created the schedule to fit them. France is supposed to start tommorow's match at 12:00 AM... I can only imagine the outcry if some other country would do something like that to us.

Well. our girls played their best volleyball, hard to hold anything against them, Serbia is the World Champion after all they played a good match and I think this proves how much progress they made lately. In a few years, I hope, they'll be one of the strongest teams in the world.

There was an equality parade yesterday in Bialystok, and of course, because it's Poland, it was invaded by hordes of uncivilized, barbaric animals which call themselves "True Patriots" Highlists include : A man using his own infant son as a shield from the police, four chavs assaulting and beating a crying girl, and six od them attacking and robbing a teenager.

2nd Round Group Stage Day 1 schedule (all times are CEST) 1st to 8th Place Games 9th to 16th Place Games

Group standings after DAY 3 (FINAL GROUP STAGE DAY)

Competition day 3 RESULTS