The so-called serpentine system, often employed by the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB), won’t be used for the composition of the groups for the Olympic Qualifications for Paris 2024.
According to what volleyball.it learned, the FIVB won’t utilize the ’serpentine’ system for the definition of the three Olympic qualifying pools per gender which will be defined in December. The Qualifiers themselves will be played in 2023: women’s from September 16 to September 24; men’s from September 30 to October 8.
As anticipated, the first 24 teams in the male and female FIVB World Rankings will be competing in this first phase, excluding France (host country of the Games) and Russia, whose disqualification is still in progress. The three organizing national teams will be seeded in their respective pools in their ranking order. Seeded number 1 in Pool A, seeded number 2 in Pool B, and seeded number 3 in Pool C. The remaining 21 teams will be divided by the draw in this way:
- from 4th to 6th place in the draw ranking for inclusion in Pool C, Pool B, and then Pool A;
- from 7th to 9th place in the draw ranking for inclusion in Pool A, Pool B, and then Pool C;
- from 10th to 12th place in the draw ranking for inclusion in Pool C, Pool B, and then Pool A;
- from 13th to 15th place in the draw ranking for inclusion in Pool A, Pool B, and then Pool C;
- from 16th to 18th place in the draw ranking for inclusion in Pool C, Pool B, and then Pool A;
- from 19th to 21st place in the draw ranking for inclusion in Pool A, Pool B, and then Pool C;
- from 22nd to 24th place in the draw ranking for inclusion in Pool C, Pool B, and then Pool A.
At the moment, pending the draws, as the other organizing countries other than Japan (for women) aren’t known, it’s not even possible to define the draw ranges. Therefore, the imaginative composition of the pools on the basis of the ranking, however, didn’t even take into consideration the eventual top seeds of the organizing countries.
