28/02/2014 00:00
Ten days to go for FIVB Women's World Championship Drawing of Lots
2014 FIVB Volleyball World Championship - Women
Lausanne, Switzerland, February 28, 2014. World Championship fever is set to grip the volleyball community as the clock counts down to the Drawing of Lots for the FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championships Italy 2014, scheduled to take place on March 10 at the Farnese Theatre in Parma.
The Drawing of Lots will determine the teams that will play against each other for the coveted FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship title. The Championship is scheduled to take place from September 23 to October 12 in Italy, with the six host cities being Bari, Milan, Modena, Rome, Trieste and Verona.
The Women’s World Championship Drawing of Lots will begin at 16:30 local time and will be broadcast on RAI Sport and live streamed on www.fivb.org. The Women’s World Championship trophy, which was specially designed for this year’s much awaited tournament, will also be unveiled.
To date 17 out of 24 teams have earned their tickets to the Women’s World Championship, with Tunisia becoming the most recent country from Africa to join the tournament line up. The country filling the second vacancy available to the African continent will be decided this weekend at the last qualification tournament currently taking place in Algeria.
The five qualifying tournaments in the NORCECA confederation (each with four teams) will be played in May with hosts Cuba (May 5 to 11), USA, Canada, Dominican Republic (all from May 13 to 19) and Puerto Rico (May 20 to 26). The winner of each group will qualify for the World Championship, while the group runners-up go through to a play-off for the final place with six teams from June 2 to 9 in Trinidad.
Europe will be represented by hosts Italy, European champions Russia, vice European champions Germany, as well as by Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Netherlands, Serbia, and Turkey.
The 24 teams will be divided into four pools of six teams, which will be a round-robin system over five days – three matches per day – with four cities (Rome, Trieste, Bari and Verona) hosting a pool each.
The top four teams of each pool will advance to the second round (in Bari, Trieste, Verona and Modena), where the 16 teams will be split into two pools of eight (top four teams of Pool A and D will play in Pool E, top four of Pool B and Pool C will play in Pool F), with the top three of each pool advancing to the third round.
The top three teams from the two second-round pools will advance to the third round with the winners, placed in each pool, while the second and third will be drawn. The third and final round will consist of a round-robin system, with the top two teams of each pool advancing to the semi-finals before the final takes place in Milan on October 12.
The FIVB Volleyball World Championships are a quadrennial event. Russia will be looking to add a third consecutive title after winning back-to-back titles in 2006 and 2010.
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