It’s a tournament to be welcomed with humiliation after 27 consecutive defeats.
The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) finalized and released the 2024 Volleyball Nations League (VNL) schedule on its official website on Monday. The tournament will kick off on May 14 with the women’s qualifiers, followed by the men’s qualifiers and the men’s and women’s finals.
Established by FIVB in 2018, the 토토사이트 VNL is the sport’s flagship event, featuring the top 16 nations in volleyball and crowning a champion. South Korea will represent the women’s national team at the next edition. The men’s team participated in the 2018 inaugural tournament, but have since fallen off the map and have never made an appearance at the tournament.
The situation is not much different for the women’s team. They participated in the tournament last year and this year, and both times they lost all 12 matches. Their inability to earn even a single point exposed the current state of Korean volleyball. Including their three consecutive VNL losses in 2021, they have lost 27 consecutive matches.
They will still qualify for the upcoming competition. The VNL is a system of 12 “core nations” and four “challenger nations” competing. South Korea was categorized as a “core nation” by the federation in 2018, when the tournament was launched, and was granted the privilege of competing regardless of its performance for the next seven years. The last year of that period is 2024.
South Korea’s women’s volleyball team has slipped to 40th in the FIVB world rankings following a string of poor international performances. Unless there is a clear turnaround, the team is no longer guaranteed a spot in the 2025 VNL. The upcoming tournament is effectively their last chance.
Korea will play week one in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, followed by week two in Arlington, Texas, before traveling to Japan for the final three weeks of qualifying. The host city in Japan will be determined at a later date. There is no schedule for the Korean team, but qualifiers will also be held in Antalya, Turkey, and Macau and Hong Kong, China.
After wrapping up the qualifiers, the Finals, where the top teams will compete in earnest, will take place over four days from June 20-23. The venue is also still to be determined.
Meanwhile, the men’s schedule starts a week later than the women’s. Japan, the Asian sensation who finished third in the tournament this season, will be joined by Poland and the United States, among others, to compete in Brazil, Japan, Turkiye, Canada, Slovenia, and the Philippines.