At 4:30 a.m. Beijing time on May 15, that is, there are two days left, the Chinese women's volleyball team will usher in the first international event of 2024, the first game of the first week of the World Women's Volleyball League in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, against the Asian weak South Korean women's volleyball team. Compared with the World League in previous years, this year's Chinese women's team has excluded military training and has one more task, that is, to strive for a ticket to the Paris Olympics. Therefore, the three-week World League, a total of 12 games, can not afford to lose any of them.
In the Olympic qualifying match for the Paris Olympics held in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province last year, the Chinese women's volleyball team unexpectedly lost consecutive games at home, resulting in the failure to get the ticket to the Paris Olympics in the first place, and suffered huge criticism at that time. After more than half a year of adjustment and preparation, the Chinese women's volleyball team continued to set off and continue to impact the qualification for the Paris Olympics in the World Women's Volleyball League. According to the regulations, the Chinese women's volleyball team has the opportunity to lock in the final place as a world ranking. As long as the Chinese women's volleyball team ranks first in Asia, or the top four in the world ranking that has not been qualified, the place can be locked.
At present, the Chinese women's volleyball team is ranked sixth in the world, second only to the Italian women's volleyball team, which has also not qualified for the Olympics and is ranked fifth in the world. In addition, since the Asian team also failed to qualify in the previous qualifying round, the top Asian team will automatically get the promotion place after the end of this year's World Women's Volleyball League. At present, the Chinese women's volleyball team beats the ninth-ranked Japanese women's volleyball team and temporarily ranks first in Asia, but in terms of points, it is only 24.56 points more than the Japanese team. Coupled with the settlement mechanism of the current world ranking points, this point difference will be instantly erased due to the impact of various unpopular results.
Take the first opponent of the Chinese women's volleyball team, the South Korean women's volleyball team, the latter who has dropped to 40th in the world rankings is an absolute weak team, and if the Chinese women's volleyball team loses to the South Korean team, it will lose huge points. The FIVB official website has listed the changes in the world ranking points corresponding to the various score results that appear. If the Chinese women's volleyball team loses 0-3 to South Korea, it will lose 19.07 points, if it loses 1-3 to South Korea, it will lose 16.57 points, and if it loses 2-3 to South Korea, it will lose 14.07 points. A 3-0 win over South Korea would only add 0.93 points, and a 3-1 or 3-2 win would only add 0.01 points.
Therefore, for the Chinese women's volleyball team in this year's World League, every game needs to be paid enough attention and cannot be lost. In the face of strong opponents, go all out to impact the opponent, strive to cause upsets, and earn big points; In the face of the weak team, we must pay attention to the opponent and not lose Jingzhou carelessly, otherwise we will suffer huge losses. According to the schedule, in the first week of Rio, Brazil, the Chinese women's volleyball team faced South Korea, the United States, Canada and Serbia, among which the United States and Serbia are opponents ranked higher than the Chinese team, and the results of these two games will be related to the trend of the Chinese team's points.