Volleyball powerhouses, up-and-coming teams qualify for inaugural #EuroVolleyU21W and #EuroVolleyU22M Finals

Seven teams per gender qualified this past weekend for the final stage of the inaugural #EuroVolleyU21W and #EuroVolleyU22M, thus joining hosts Italy and Poland in the competition that is due to take place later this summer.

Italy, Serbia, Turkey, France, the Netherlands and Austria all emerged victorious from their respective #EuroVolleyU22M qualifiers with a clean sweep of their matches – recording two or three wins in a row depending on the number of teams featuring in their group. Montenegro will contest the #EuroVolleyU22M Final Round as well – as they finished the qualification round as the best runner-up across all groups. The maiden #EuroVolleyU22M title will be up for grabs in mid-July in Tarnow, Poland.

With Italy already qualified as hosts, Serbia, Poland and Austria all made the home advantage count in the #EuroVolleyU21W qualifiers to top their respective pools. Four more teams will contest the Final Round in Cerignola and Andria. Turkey claimed top spot of the group they contested in Montenegro – with Israel, Denmark and Ukraine securing the final places in the inaugural #EuroVolleyU21W as the runners-up with the best result across all pools.

In a positive development for European Volleyball, these qualifiers featured teams from the Small Countries Association (SCA) as well, with Iceland and the Faroe Islands contesting the U21 women’s as well as the U22 men’s tournaments with their rising stars, as Ireland travelled to Italy to join a #EuroVolleyU22M qualifier featuring the likes of Italy, Portugal and Israel as well. Despite losing all of their matches, the SCA Federations will for sure take many positives and lessons from this experience as they try to establish themselves by providing as many opportunities as possible for their players to compete internationally.