Italy claimed their second VNL title after defeating Japan in a four-set final. Japan took the silver medal, which is their best result in this tournament. Poland retained the bronze medal after defeating Brazil in a five-set 3rd place match.[3]Paola Egonu of Italy named as the MVP of the tournament.[4]
Qualification
Sixteen teams qualified for the competition. Eleven of them qualified as core teams which cannot face relegation. Other five teams were selected as challenger teams which could be relegated from the tournament. France replaced Croatia after winning the 2023 Challenger Cup. In a change of format for the next edition, none of current teams will be relegated and from the year 2025 onwards, the competition will consist from 18 teams. The two extra spots will be from the team that wins the 2024 Challenger Cup and the best FIVB ranked team who are not in this year event.[5]
The format of play is the same as edition 2022's. The new format will see 16 women's teams competing in pools of 8 teams during the pool phase. The participating teams were ranked from 1st to 16th in the FIVB world rankings after the end of the last edition, and each team will play a total of 12 matches during the preliminary round over 3 weeks, against equally strong opponents – 3 matches against teams ranked 1st to 4th, 3 matches against teams ranked 5th to 8th, 3 matches against teams ranked 9th to 12th, and 3 matches against teams ranked 13th to 16th. The eight best teams will then move into the final knockout phase of the competition. However, this rule is only applied if the finals host country advances as part of this group. In this does not happen, the 7 best teams advance.[6]
Final round
The VNL Finals will see the top eight teams moving directly to the knockout phase which will consist of eight matches in total: four quarterfinals, two semi-finals and the bronze and gold medal matches.[6]
Final 8 direct elimination formula:
The first ranked team will play a quarterfinal match against the eighth ranked team, the second ranked team will play a quarterfinal match against the seventh ranked team, the third ranked team will play a quarterfinal match against the sixth ranked team, the fourth ranked team will play a quarterfinal match against the fifth ranked team.
The national team of the hosting territory of the event will have a guaranteed berth for the Final round. If the host nation does not finish in the top eight in Preliminary round, they will replace the eighth place team and play as the eighth seed.
Pool composition
The overview of pools was released on 8 December 2023.[7]
Total number of victories (matches won, matches lost)
In the event of a tie, the following first tiebreaker will apply: The teams will be ranked by the most points gained per match as follows:
Match won 3–0 or 3–1: 3 points for the winner, 0 points for the loser
Match won 3–2: 2 points for the winner, 1 point for the loser
Match forfeited: 3 points for the winner, 0 points (0–25, 0–25, 0–25) for the loser
If teams are still tied after examining the number of victories and points gained, then the FIVB will examine the results in order to break the tie in the following order:
Sets quotient: if two or more teams are tied on the number of points gained, they will be ranked by the quotient resulting from the division of the number of all sets won by the number of all sets lost.
Points quotient: if the tie persists based on the sets quotient, the teams will be ranked by the quotient resulting from the division of all points scored by the total of points lost during all sets.
If the tie persists based on the points quotient, the tie will be broken based on the team that won the match of the Round Robin Phase between the tied teams. When the tie in points quotient is between three or more teams, these teams ranked taking into consideration only the matches involving the teams in question.
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