Team Portugal aiming for final ticket to #EuroVolleyU22W

The Pavilhão Multiusos de Paredes will host on July 21-23 Pool A in the qualifiers for the 2024 U22 Women’s European Championship. The home favourites of Portugal will face, in this order, the teams of Ireland, Denmark, and Ukraine. All matches are broadcasted live on the Portuguese channel Volei.TV.

“The teams from Ukraine and Denmark were present at the last European Championship and, if they keep some of their athletes, we believe that they will start as favourites. Taking into consideration our qualifying phase in 2022, the fact that we are playing at home and the continuous development of our work, we strongly believe that we can fight for a spot in the Final Round. We really want to start winning against Ireland to get the necessary confidence for the remaining challenges,” says head coach João Santos. “We can assume that the main objective is to qualify for the 2024 European Championship. The first ranked from the pool qualifies automatically. There is still a chance if we are one of the best second across the four groups, so we are aiming for one of those positions as well.” 

“From the group of 12 athletes present in Montenegro in 2022, six are still playing this year. The way the competition ended was tough, leaving us out of a historic qualification in the tiebreaker by sets, comparing our results with those of Ukraine. The dedication and seriousness with which the athletes have been working in the past few weeks clearly show that no one has forgotten what happened, and we believe that they are extremely motivated by having the opportunity to fight for qualification with the Ukrainian national team,” Santos concludes. 

The four pool winners and the three runners-up with the best result will join hosts Italy in the final stage of the competition scheduled for the summer of 2024.