The 2024 FIVB Men's Volleyball Nations League was the sixth edition of the FIVB Men's Volleyball Nations League, an annual men's international volleyball tournament. The competition was held from 21 May to 30 June 2024, with the final round taking place at the Atlas Arena, Łódź, Poland.[1]
France won their second VNL title after a four-set match against Japan in the final. It was Japan's first silver medal in 47 years. Finals host Poland swept Slovenia in the third place match to bag their third bronze medal.[3]Antoine Brizard from France was named the MVP of the tournament.[4]
Qualification
Sixteen teams qualified for the competition. Ten of them qualified as core teams, which cannot face relegation, with the other six teams selected as the challenger teams that could be relegated from the tournament. Turkey replaced China after winning the 2023 Challenger Cup. In a change of format for the next edition, none of the current teams will be relegated, and from the year 2025 onwards the competition will expand to 18 teams. The two extra spots will be from the team that wins the 2024 Challenger Cup and the best FIVB ranked team who are not in this year event.[5]
The format of play is generally the same as in the 2022 edition. However, the current format has the 16 men's teams competing in pools of 8 teams during the pool phase. Each team play 12 matches during the pool stage. Eight teams will then move into the final knockout phase of the competition.[6]
Final round
The VNL Finals will see the top eight teams moving directly to the knockout phase, which will consist of eight matches in total: four quarterfinals, two semi-finals, and the bronze and gold medal matches.[6]
Final 8 direct elimination formula:
The first ranked team will play a quarterfinal match against the eighth ranked team, the second ranked team will play a quarterfinal match against the seventh ranked team, the third ranked team will play a quarterfinal match against the sixth ranked team, and the fourth ranked team will play a quarterfinal match against the fifth ranked team.
The national team of the hosting territory of the event will have a guaranteed berth for the Final round. If the host nation team do not finish in the top eight in the Preliminary round, they will replace the eighth place team and play as the eighth seed.
Pool composition
The overview of pools was released on 8 December 2023.[7]
Total number of victories (matches won, matches lost)
In the event of a tie, the following first tiebreaker will apply, with the teams ranked by the most points gained per match as follows:
Match won 3–0 or 3–1: 3 points for the winner, 0 points for the loser
Match won 3–2: 2 points for the winner, 1 point for the loser
Match forfeited: 3 points for the winner, 0 points (0–25, 0–25, 0–25) for the loser
If teams are still tied after examining the number of victories and points gained, the FIVB will examine the results in order to break the tie in the following order:
Sets quotient: if two or more teams are tied on the number of points gained, they will be ranked by the quotient resulting from the division of the number of all sets won by the number of all sets lost.
Points quotient: if the tie persists based on the sets quotient, the teams will be ranked by the quotient resulting from the division of all points scored by the total of points lost during all sets.
If the tie persists based on the points quotient, the tie will be broken based on the team that won the match between the tied teams during the Round Robin Phase. When the tie in points quotient is between three or more teams, these teams will be ranked taking into consideration only the matches involving the teams in question.