thorny. Will the women's volleyball team be able to overcome the humiliating crisis of 'no medal', which it has experienced only once in the past 15 tournaments in 1962?
The women's volleyball team (ranked 40th in the world), led by coach Cesar Gonzalez, will play its first match of the quarterfinals against China (ranked 6th) at the Changqian Campus gymnasium of Hangzhou Normal University, China, on the 4th.
In the quarterfinal round, Korea starts with one loss from the start. According to the competition regulations, one loss (one win) in the group stage continued until the quarterfinals.
It was painful to lose 2-3 in the first match of the group stage, against Vietnam (39th). In the first game, Korea took a 2-0 lead against Vietnam, which was considered to be one step below them, but suffered a shocking comeback loss. Korea, which had already lost 2-3 to Vietnam in the group stage of the Asian Championships last August, bowed its head in the same scenario at the Asian Games. Korea, whose world ranking was overtaken by Vietnam due to all losses in the 2024 Paris Olympics preliminaries, had to endure a painful loss as they realized the gap in skill even in the head-to-head match.
Korea made a comeback with a 3-0 shutout win against Nepal in the second game. But even this wasn't good. As if the shock of the Vietnam War had not subsided, Korea even gave up the lead in the first set with a series of mistakes. Nepal is one of the weakest teams that is not even included in the world rankings. Korea struggled against Nepal and continued to be in a miserable mood.
South Korea will meet China and North Korea, the first and second place winners in Group A, in the quarterfinals. Vietnam, the group's opponent, is also in the same group, but they do not face each other, and the one loss suffered by Vietnam in the group stage continues until the quarterfinals. In the end, Korea will have to face China and North Korea with one loss, and even if they win all of their games, they will have to watch the results of China and Vietnam, who start the quarterfinals with one win.
To make matters worse, the first opponent is China, the home team and one of the strongest teams in Asia. China's world ranking is 6th, and they are a strong team that swept 8 gold medals in the Asian Games alone. In the last 10 competitions, gold medals were shared between Korea and China, but China took 8 of them. Korea lost 1-3 to China in a Volleyball Nations League (VNL) match held at home last July, and lost 1-3 in the same tournament in 2022. This is not an easy opponent. 토토사이트
If they lose against China in the first game of the quarterfinals, Korea will have two losses and their chances of winning a medal will be even slimmer.
Korea has been consistently winning medals since the 1962 Jakarta Asian Games, when volleyball was adopted as an official sport. They have reigned as a powerhouse on the Asian stage, with only one competition (2006 Doha Games) in which they failed to win a medal out of 15 competitions. But recent trends are grim. Attention is being paid to whether women's volleyball, which is in crisis, can successfully turn around its performance against China in the quarterfinals.