The system of the 2022 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championships turned out to be controversial.
The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) changed the system of playing the World Championship 2022 after taking away their organization from Russia and introduced the 1/8 final matches and quarter-finals instead of playing the second group stage. This is due to the change from one host to two – Poland and Slovenia. Ok, that’s old news. But, not many realized that such a change brings out something else, and one day before the start of the event, which entered Day 3, it became obvious – changing the rules gives co-hosts a bit of a privilege in the knockout stage. It’s about how the teams are deployed after the group stage.
It was established that 16 teams will be classified in a special ranking and will be seeded. As FIVB informed, the most important criterion for classifying teams will be the position in the pool, followed by the number of wins, then points, the ratio of sets won to losses, the ratio of points scored to lost, direct encounters, and finally even the FIVB ranking. However, there’s one “BUT“. Poland and Slovenia, due to their roles as hosts of the event, will be the two highest seeded teams. No. 1 will be the team that gets the better result in the group stage. The other one will get No. 2. This means that the group stage matches aren’t that important for the Poles and the Slovenes. If they advance to the next stage of the competition, it doesn’t matter with how many points they’ll do so – in both cases they’ll be first- or second-seeded teams in the Round of 16. Their rivals will be teams from third places in their groups, the two theoretically weakest among those remaining in the World Champs.
It wasn’t difficult to predict that such a move by the FIVB wouldn’t be approved by other teams participating in the event. According to sport.pl, the first teams to raise their voices against this rule change were Serbia (head coach Igor Kolaković: “This isn’t a private tournament,“ and outside hitter Uroš Kovačević), the United States (libero Erik Shoji), and Bulgaria (head coach Nikolay Jeliazkov: “It’s inappropriate and unnecessary.“).
Poland’s head coach Nikola Grbić, on the other hand, doesn’t see anything uncommon in the fact that a host has some kind of privilege.
“It was the same in the Nations League (the hosts of the final tournament – women and men – had a guaranteed seeding with the number one, regardless of the results). Or the World Championship 2010 in Italy. This is normal for me. And I’m not saying that because I’m now a Polish coach and I’m taking advantage of it,“ the Serbian expert stated.
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The funnies thing is that, according to Swiderski, FIVB implemented this rule without consulting either of hosts. So Poland and Slovenia where as surprised by this as the rest of participants O_O