This Saturday, the Cuban men’s volleyball team undertook a very long trip of almost 30 hours and 2 stops to reach Slovenia, where they will play the third and final week of the Nations League (VNL), in which they will play for a place in the final of the event and qualification for the Paris Olympic Games.
The team led by Jesús Cruz left in the morning from Havana to Caracas, to then follow the route to Istanbul, Turkey, and from there to Slovenia, where they will arrive on Sunday at the end of the afternoon, less than 72 hours from his first presentation at the Stožice Arena in Ljubljana against Serbia.
Simon’s rescue
see more
Precisely, the Serbs, direct rivals of the Antillean team for the last Olympic ticket in dispute, will arrive at that clash with more than a week of rest and acclimatization in Europe after playing in Brazil and Canada in the first two rounds of the VNL 2024. That detail will be a point of advantage for the Balkans, who surpass Cuba by a very narrow margin in the world ranking.
Serbia, led by Igor Kolaković, has 251.55 units in the global ranking, 0.91 points ahead of the Antilleans (250.64). The Europeans obtained important victories over the Netherlands and Canada in Ottawa, while they fell against the United States and Argentina, giving them a positive balance of 13.04 points in the second week of competitions.
On the other hand, Cuba finished with a negative record of -10.53 after losing against Canada, the Netherlands and Italy. The salvation of the Caribbean was their victory in five sets over the Olympic champions of France. Thanks to that victory in extremisthe Antilleans will arrive with Olympic qualification aspirations to the duel against Serbia, which seems like a full-fledged final.
Volleyball Nations League: a wall from Brazil to Paris
see more
According to the information on the official VNL website, the winner of that match will multiply his advantage in the ranking by two, since the loser will be subtracted the same number of points that the winner achieves, regardless of the result. This leaves us facing a life or death scenario for Cubans and Serbs, but let’s go into more details:
* Whoever wins 3-0 will get 10.5 units. If Cuba wins with that score it would be 20.09 points ahead of the Serbians. If the Europeans win they would take 21.91 units from the Antilleans.
* Whoever wins 3-1 will get 7.55 units. If Cuba wins with that score it would be 14.19 points ahead of the Serbians. If the Europeans win they would take 16.01 units from the Antilleans.
* Whoever wins 3-2 will get 5.05 units. If Cuba wins with that score it would be 9.19 points ahead of the Serbians. If the Europeans win they would take 11.01 units from the Antilleans.
As we see, any definition against it would be lapidary, especially if we take into account that both Serbians and Cubans will close their calendar against Slovenia and Poland, teams that are in second and third position in the VNL with records of 7-1 and 6 -2, respectively.
