Sport as always brings a lot of entertainment, joy and also spectacularity. From 28th August to 16th September, in the next 21 days the whole European Volleyball world will have a long-awaited Championships which will take place in four European countries, including Macedonia. 

One part of this championship concerns the women’s side and these competitions kicked off almost two weeks before the men’s tournament. Now, it is nearly over, but on the contrary, there are still a lot of matches to be played from the men’s volleyball side. Let’s take a look at this.

24 teams will take part In the 33th Men’s European Volleyball Championship. Typically, the first teams which were sure about their future performance in the volleyball competition are the hosts. This year the hosting countries are Macedonia, Bulgaria, Italy and Israel.

Every group counts six teams and everything was adjusted according to special regulations. One of the most obvious things about draw rules, as always, is drawing the hosts from the same basket, but also finalists from previous championships couldn’t be in the same group. This concerned Italian hosts and Slovenia.

The drawing ceremony was held in November last year and ultimately Macedonian hosts landed in one group with one of the best teams around the world – Poland, as well as with Montenegro, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Denmark. During the last European Championships in 2021, the Polish National team won the bronze medal in the third place game against Serbia. The Dutch team achieved fifth place, while the Czech occupied eighth. Macedonia and Montenegro didn’t pass the group stage, and Denmark didn’t participate.

The group C, with Macedonia as a host, and with a current Men’s Nations League champion, Poland, will play first matches at ,,Boris Trajkovski Arena’’ in Skopje. The venue in total can accommodate 10,000 spectators, but within 3,500 removed seats and 6,500 fixed. It was a venue for the Volleyball European League in 2018.

The first clashes of the Macedonian group will start on 30 August with the host playing against Denmark,  and the next one will be an exciting Balkan match with Montenegro on 2 September. One day later Macedonians will play the heaviest battle in their group – against the Polish team, which for obvious  reasons is predicted  to be the possible winner of these championships. The second last game for Macedonians will be on 5 September against the Netherlands, and in the last game the Czech Republic awaits them, finishing the group battles on 6 September.

The European Championship in volleyball is played every second year and for sure there is a huge group of fans waiting for this big tournament to come back after 2 years. Finally, the fans’ appetite for European volleyball will be satisfied with the opening match between Italy and Belgium on 28 August. The opening ceremony will take place in one of the host Italian cities – Bologna, but the final is scheduled on 16 September in the Italian capital city – Rome. Except for Bologna, the group games in Italy will also be held in Ancona and Perugia. Not forgetting about Bari which will host some squads in the round of 16 and quarterfinals.

The tournament will start with the game from group A, with a host and a title – defender – Italy. Their group opponents are Switzerland, Serbia, Germany, Belgium and Estonia. We can expect a more fierce game in this group, since there is not only the current European champion, but also considered at this time the second best volleyball team from the Balkans – Serbia, which took fourth place two years ago. Certainly, the spectators will have an amazing show, watching such a match, when Serbian will have a match against an interesting, always threatening Belgians for example, which in recent years improved their results on the European Championship. Also, there is an unpredictable German team which in the previous European competitions took a not bad 6th place. But Belgian volleyball players reached the 4th place in 2017, so they were close to win a medal then and obviously now they are hungry for a better achievement  in the nearest tournament.

Next group B is with Bulgaria as a host, and teams from Finland, Slovenia, Ukraine, Spain and Croatia. It makes it three teams from Balkan region to face each other in one group and it will be the highlight of this part of the tournament to see the inter- Balkan clashes. The strongest constellation appears to be Slovenians who are silver- medalists from 2021. But we can’t underestimate the hosts – Bulgarians. Last biggest success of the Bulgarian team was taking 6th and 4th place in 2017 and earlier in 2015 with Plamen Konstantinov as a head coach. After a couple of years, Konstantinov came back to be Bulgaria’s head coach in 2022. Maybe this time Bulgarians will be able to reach higher, taking the advantage of playing at home and having a big amount of fans supporting them lively.

Group B will be playing in Varna, one of the official headquarters of the championships in Bulgaria. After the group stage, ,,The Palace of Culture and Sport’’ will also host some of the games of round of 16, including the teams that advance from group B and their further opponents. This Bulgarian venue will also be used in the later part of the tournament, hosting two of the quarter-finals.

Finally,  last but not least – group D. Israel  is the last of the four hosts and doesn’t have many successes to boast about. If we already mentioned, Israel hasn’t participated in the European Championship since the 70’s. It is an interesting choice to select Israel as one of the hosts for the competition. Together with lack of any volleyball achievements, and not being located in the European continent – we can assume that money played an important role while choosing some of the hosting countries.

The official headquarter is located in Tel Aviv and the name of the venue is ,,Shlomo Group Arena’’. The capacity of the arena is up to 3,400 seats and there will play the representations of Turkey, Greece, Romania, Portugal and another great and titled European team – France, which surely is the biggest favorite here. Knowing about their disappointing performance during the last European tournament in 2021, they want to erase this dark stain from the past and achieve a better result.

As a Polish, I will especially wait for matches in pool C, not only because of my native country, but also to see in volleyball action the Macedonian team in front of their own supporters. After another huge success not long ago, Poles are even more motivated to target and claim the next trophy.

Certainly, there will be no shortage of emotions!

Marcel Mańkowski

Sources: 

Sport1.pl: terminarz siatkarskich mistrzostw europy 2023 – godziny meczów, grupy, wyniki, format

TVP Sport: Z kim zagra reprezentacja Polski w siatkówce kobiet na ME?