Final Qualifier for 2019 EuroVolleyM Begins on August 15th

2019 EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL QUALIFYING TOURNAMENT – MEN

• August 15th, 2018-January 9th, 2019
• Home-and-home, double round robin
• Schedule & Standings

The final round of qualifying for the 2019 European Men’s Volleyball Championship tournament, kicks off on Wednesday around the continent. For the next 5 months, beginning on August 15th and wrapping in early January.

• Bookmark the VolleyMob Qualification Tournament landing page to keep up with the tournament.

12 teams have already qualified for the tournament. 4 of those have qualified as co-hosts (Belgium, Slovenia, France, and the Netherlands), while 8 more have qualified based on their finish at the 2017 European Championships (Russia, Germany, Serbia, Italy, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey).

At the final qualification tournament, 7 teams will play in pools of 3-or-4 teams each. The winners of each pool, plus the 5-best runners-up, will advance to the main draw of the European Championships next summer.

Teams were seeded for the qualification tournament based upon their standing in the latest European rankings, in a serpentine fashion.

The full schedule hasn’t been laid yet, but teams will play home-and-home, double round-robin against the other teams in their pools. The home-and-homes will generally come in back-to-back matches.

The highest-ranked team in the men’s tournament is Finland, who finished 12th at the European Championships: one spot short of qualifying automatically.

Portugal, however, has the hot hand after winning the FIVB Challenger Cup earlier this summer to earn a spot in the 16-team FIVB Nations League tournament in 2019. Led by veteran brothers Marco Ferreira at opposite and Alexamdre Ferreira at outside hitter, the Portuguese dropped only 2 sets in 4 matches at that Challenge Cup. That includes a sweep of Cuba.

They’ll be among the biggest favorites to advance out of this tournament, along with Ukraine, who play in a relatively-weak pool, and Slovakia. Finland is in an interesting position as the only team in this qualifier who is also playing at the World Championships later this summer. That becomes a heavy national team schedule for the Finns, which gives more opportunities for injury. Still, they’ll be favorites out of Pool A against Denmark and Romania.

The Pools: