Paris 2024: Heavyweights Poland, Italy and Brazil meet in Pool B

Starting on Saturday, the South Paris Arena 1 will welcome the best men’s volleyball national teams in the world, as the Olympic tournament of the Paris 2024 Games is set to begin.

Pool play will be the first phase of the tournament, with eight of the 12 teams entered moving forward to the elimination rounds. Three pools were formed ahead of the start of the event and, at the conclusion of the pool phase, all three pool winners and runners-up will advance to the quarterfinals, as well as the two best-ranked third-placed sides.

Pool B has three men’s volleyball giants in Poland, Italy and Brazil, who will certainly feature in exciting duels as they compete for the top spot in the group ahead of the elimination rounds. African representatives Egypt will have a big mountain to climb if they want to break pool, but they have delivered upsets in the past and there’s no better place to do it again than the Olympics.

Here’s our summary of the four men’s national teams of Pool B:

Poland

The top national team in the FIVB World Rankings, Poland will try to win a medal after 48 years and to do so, they will need to make it past the quarterfinals, where they campaign ended in their last five appearances. The team’s results in the past three years couldn’t be more encouraging as the Polish took silver at the 2022 FIVB World Championship, won three VNL medals (gold in 2023 and bronze in 2022 and 2024) and earned gold at the 2023 European Championship.

Poland’s offense is one of the best in international volleyball, counting on Wilfredo Leon, Kamil Semeniuk, Tomasz Fornal and Aleksander Śliwka at outside hitter and Bartosz Kurek and Łukasz Kaczmarek at opposite. Head coach Nikola Grbić also has elite-level players in other positions, such as libero Paweł Zatorski and middle blockers Jakub Kochanowski and Mateusz Bieniek.

Italy

Italy appear in third place in the World Rankings and will try to return to the podium at the Olympics after missing it out in Tokyo three years ago. The Italians arrive in Paris as the reigning world champions as they won the title in 2022 – in the last three years, they also took gold (2021) and silver (2023) at the European Championship.

Setter and captain Simone Giannelli is the only member of the team that took silver at the Rio 2016 Games to appear in the squad selected by head coach Ferdinando De Giorgi. Setter Riccardo Sbertoli, outside hitters Alessandro Michieletto and Daniele Lavia and middle blocker Gianluca Galassi were all in Tokyo. Among the Italian Olympic rookies, opposite Yuri Romanò and libero Fabio Balaso are expected to have big roles in Paris.

Paris 2024 – Match Schedule

Brazil

Brazil had their Olympic medal-winning streak interrupted in Tokyo, when they failed to make it to the podium at the Games for the first time since Sydney 2000. Currently in seventh place in the World Rankings, the Brazilians took bronze at the 2022 World Championship and had podium appearances at the continental level recently, claiming gold at the 2023 Pan American Games and gold (2021) and silver (2023) at the South American Championship.

The coach who guided the team to four Olympic medals from Athens 2004 to Rio 2016, Bernardo Rezende returned at the end of 2023. He’ll have three members of the team that won gold at home eight years ago on the roster – setter and captain Bruno Rezende, outside hitter Ricardo Lucarelli and middle blocker Lucas Saatkamp. Opposite Darlan de Souza and middle blocker Flavio Gualberto are some of the new faces who emerged in the last few years.

Egypt

The top African nation at the World Ranking in 19^th place, Egypt are back in the Games for the first time since Rio 2016, when they earned their first Olympic match win. In their last appearance in a major international tournament, the Egyptians were 19^th at the 2022 World Championship. They won the African Championship in 2023 and took bronze at the Volleyball Challenger Cup in 2024.

Setter Hossam Youssef and middle blocker Mohamed ‘Dola’ Masoud are the only players who competed in Rio to continue with the team for the Paris Games. Head coach Fernando Muñoz will have opposite Reda Haikal, outside hitter Mohamed Issa and libero Mohamed Reda as other important pieces in his team.

Men’s Pool B Match Schedule

July 27
13:00 local time (11:00 GMT) – Italy vs. Brazil
17:00 local time (15:0 GMT) – Poland vs. Egypt

July 30
9:00 local time (7:00 GMT) – Italy vs. Egypt

July 31
9:00 local time (7:00 GMT) – Poland vs. Brazil

August 2
13:00 local time (11:00 GMT) – Brazil vs. Egypt

August 3
17:00 local time (15:00 GMT) – Poland vs. Italy

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