FIVB World League: France Looks to Stay Perfect in Pool F1 (PREVIEW)

2017 FIVB WORLD LEAGUE – POOL F1 PREVIEW

• June 9-11, 2017
• Palais des Sports, Pau, France
• Central European Summer Time Zone (UTC+01:00)
• Live results
• Week 1 points leaders

Schedule:

• 17:30 matches on June 9th/10th will begin at 11:30 New York Time
• 20:30 matches on June 9th/10th will begin at  22:30 Moscow Time Zone
• 15:30 matches on June 11th will begin at 17:30 Moscow Time Zone
• 18:30 matches on June 11th will begin at 12:30 New York Time

Group 1 Standings:

MATCHES		PTS	SETS			POINTS
Rank	Team		W	L	W	L	Ratio	W	L	Ratio
1	France***	3	0	9	9	1	9.000	249	203	1.227
2	Belgium	2	1	7	8	4	2.000	284	259	1.097
3	Brazil	2	1	7	8	5	1.600	288	277	1.040
4	Serbia	2	1	6	6	5	1.200	254	248	1.024
5	Poland	2	1	5	7	6	1.167	293	276	1.062
6	Canada	2	1	4	7	7	1.000	303	307	0.987
7	Russia***	1	2	4	6	6	1.000	264	254	1.039
8	Italy***	1	2	3	5	6	0.833	243	255	0.953
9	Bulgaria	1	2	3	5	8	0.625	269	293	0.918
10	Iran	1	2	3	4	7	0.571	248	264	0.939
11	Argentina	1	2	2	3	8	0.375	226	258	0.876
12	United States***	0	3	1	4	9	0.444	277	304	0.911

Notes: Brazil, host of the Final 6, highlighted in blue. *** denotes teams playing in Group D1.

Preview:

France comes into Pool F1 as the lone undefeated squad remaining in World League. Not only did the French side remain perfect with wins against Bulgaria, Russia and Argentina, but they did so in four sets or less to take the maximum nine points. Stephen Boyer was the top attacker for France, netting 47 points, while Julien Lyneel scored 41 and finished second in Group 1 in aces (7) in the opening week.

The final three participants in Pool F1 all sit below the line needed to make the Final Six. Russia (seventh) sits right on the edge behind a sweep of Argentina and a fourth point from a five-set loss to Bulgaria. The Russians were led by the great blocking of Denis Biriukov (11) and Ilia Vlasov (11), who tied for the Group 1 lead. Maxim Zhigalov also punched the most aces of the opening week with eight of them.

Italy, right behind Russia in eighth, got a 3-0 win over Iran but couldn’t gather up another point in four-set losses to Poland and Brazil. Filippo Lanza led the Italians with 41 points. Luca Vettori wasn’t far behind with 39 in the first weekend of pool play.

The United States will try to get off the schneid this weekend after losing all three matches, with their lone point coming in a five-set loss to Canada that was stuffed in between four-set losses to Serbia and Belgium. Benjamin Patch scored a team-best 17 points in that lone point recorded for the Red, White and Blue.

The French-Russian rematch will take place on Friday. The first meeting was a 3-1 France victory as they were charged up by a combined 52 points from Stephen Boyer (18), Julie Lyneel (17) and Trevon Clevenot (17).

On the same day, the United States will face Italy in a rematch of the 2016 Olympic semifinals. The Italians won that match 3-2 as they would take the silver and the U.S. won the bronze in Rio.

Speaking of that bronze medal, the very next day the United States will take on the Russian side that they won 3-2 against in that 2016 Olympic bronze medal match. Similar to U.S.-Russia, the Italy-France battle on June 10th will also be a rematch of a third place game; France defeated Italy 3-0 in the 2016 FIVB World League third place match.

On the final day, Italy and Russia square off in a match that fares two squads on the bubble of the Final Six. The U.S.-France matchup features two teams on diametrically opposed ends of the standings.

For France, they’ll look to stay perfect and expand on its overall Group 1 first place lead. The other three squads are treading water. They’ll have an opportunity to beat up on other competition in the same circumstance as themselves though as they look to move up in the standings.