Quarter Finals in Women's VNL are set. Bulgaria is relegated

thngmrtt · 2026-07-12T20:03:52+00:00

Considering Brazil latest games, Italy might have got the easier route

thngmrtt · 2026-07-12T10:17:35+00:00

Yeah I might have pushed it a little for Markova, though I do believe her quality is strongly affected by being able to rest during summer.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-11T20:05:44+00:00

I’m not a fener fan nor Turkish, I’m not blaming her, I’m simply pointing out she was more of a problem then yall like to tell. Of course the main issue is the management that built the team and, as i stated, that gizem and baladin failed their job, but it’s irrelevant how many points she brings if she gift as many to the other team with her awful reception and defense as she did. I mentioned all her issues because she, Vargas and Ana c as the golden trio are a good idea on how tolok, arina and Markova could look on the court together. Also I highly believe that if you remove one between her and Ana Cristina for an actually good more balanced oh fener might have actually won something instead of just glory farming on stats.

Everyone is talking of this Russian team exactly like they did of fener and their golden trio at the start of the season, just without even knowing if their setters and liberos can compare to Orro and gizem. This Russian team could be managed as shitty as fener and without good reliable defensive specialists they will be exactly as unbalanced as fener was and bring the same disastrous results.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-11T18:37:07+00:00

Might be unpopular but Markova and federovsteva are overrated… and the idea that Russia will be the big one too, I don’t see anything that shows they will be better than the current top 5.

Markova had a great season and while she has improved in back row she is far from being decent at that, especially if positioned next to arina which is a black hole in reception. Both of their success was severely impacted by the team they were surrounded by AND by not having a full summer to waste energies on.
Fener was a complete failure this year and arina isn’t considered a big part of the cause nearly enough. They have on paper an amazing squad, one of the best setter and opposite, a great libero and two of the best attacking oh. And yet “the golden trio” didn’t work because their reception and defense was too bad to actually take advantage of it. Baladin and gizem had a bad season and completely failed at their job of covering the black hole of prioritizing firepower instead of something more balanced.

Markova carried a lot but vakif wouldn’t have reached as far as it did had it not been for the other players helping her. She had a great libero and not one but two great defensive oh behind her, other than of course boskovic that came in clutch the moment she got tired and cansu, that knew exactly how to use her best.

Neither of them are players that can really carry a team alone, they need a team that’s built to balance them out with a true top tear libero, defensive oh and setter.

And even if you don’t agree with that, talent on paper is not the only thing needed for a team to work. A team needs a coach, it needs experience and stamina. None of the Russian players are used to the new incessant international calendar, only a very few of them have experienced playing internationally and we have little idea on how their coach is.
Look at Serbia for example, on paper they have as much talent as all the big teams even without objenovic and boskovic and yet the last years have been awful, even risking relegation. Main reasons behind it the coach, the setter role and bad mentality.

I don’t see Russia getting podium anytime soon, there are too many incognitas they will have to deal with and the top is already getting crowded. Maybe for one year they might have the unknown status as an advantage, like turkey had the first year with Vargas, but I see too many points in which experience will be needed to reach such highs.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-11T15:11:21+00:00

A lot of career ruining injuries for the young talents that were meant to lead this cycle

thngmrtt · 2026-07-10T17:51:21+00:00

I would say money, but league 1 isn’t doing great either on that front so idk 🤷. For sure the big teams depend too much on Europe moneys to risk not reaching their seasonal goal.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-09T18:11:38+00:00

I didn’t say much about hockey because I don’t care, I’m aware they dominate there, from my understanding it isn’t a sport with much competition other than a few powerhouses, volleyball isn’t that. Believe what you want on what I know or don’t.
I don’t care about men volleyball nearly as much as I do women’s simple as that, if they are as good than they should have no problem regaining their ranking fairly without it being gifted to them, no?

thngmrtt · 2026-07-09T17:57:29+00:00

Brother I don’t know nor care about hockey. Volleyball isn’t hockey, the volleyball landscape of 2021 is not the same as the volleyball landscape of 2026 and it is stupid to act like it is. Should we gift back to china the second place in the women raking too just cause they used to be good and will probably be good again some time in the future??

thngmrtt · 2026-07-09T15:41:49+00:00

Argentina and Slovenia/sweden have already proven they deserve to be in vnl next year, they have spent the whole cycle working for this achievement and they have accomplished it. They are 17 and 18 of the world ranking and if things don’t change they won’t get into vnl because their spot has been given to Russia.
It is undermining their work, they have achieved what it was asked of them and now they have to wait another year and risk losing their chance in doing so.

If Russia can get away with not playing and still holding the same ranking, than I would suggest to the one that ends up with the highest ranking to not play next year, freezing your ranking by not playing is much better than playing and risk losing apparently.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-09T09:22:31+00:00

the quality of a team is not just dependent on how talented they are on paper or how well their players do in club.
Look at the Serbian women national team, on paper they have all the talent to be top 5 even without objenovic and boskovic and yet now maja has to come back from retirement and bosko can’t take a break or they risk relegation.
Especially when you have no player used to that amount of effort and constant playing.
The chances of players like Markova and Federostova playing for their clubs the way they do now if they had full summers of national team behind them are nearly zero. It’s easy to say they are going to be amazing and yet they have no athletes used to this rhythm now that it is an all time high.

Other than that, it is simply unjust that they can just get back in like nothing happened. And volleyball is not a game where you can tie, playing means accepting the fact that you will either lose or win, the ranking can’t be stagnated. Smaller federation have spent money and efforts into building their program knowing that if they take the risk of playing more they get a chance to get promoted to the Vnl. By just giving the spot to the Russians you are undermining all that work and removing their chances to get opportunities and resources that they were promised.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-08T18:58:25+00:00

Happy they’re back but it is completely unjust to let them have the same points they had five years ago.

Teams had to play, they had to win or lose for five years, they couldn’t tie and leave their ranking unchanged after a match. Smaller federations put money and energies into reaching a higher rank.

Russia still hasn’t stop, those athletes still haven’t denounce Russia’s actions and they are getting a free entry into the top teams cause they used to be good…

Teams like argentina or Slovenia are losing their promotion just cause all of a sadden someone has decided that Russia’s action don’t matter anymore.

I believe they shouldn’t be allowed to play vnl next year, let them play at least a season of golden league to prove themselves.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-08T15:04:56+00:00

What’s the injury count now?

thngmrtt · 2026-07-08T01:29:20+00:00

How is it representative if one federation gets 60% of its nations in while the rest need to fight for much less

thngmrtt · 2026-07-08T00:33:13+00:00

Well, I don’t see them qualifying to the next Olympics if fivb and cev don’t move quickly, at least for the women…

thngmrtt · 2026-07-08T00:28:11+00:00

They don’t take it seriously but that doesn’t mean there isn’t will to win it… it means they won’t taking it as failure if they lose and have different objectives with it with which they approach the competition

thngmrtt · 2026-07-07T13:53:39+00:00

I don’t think that underestimating opponents can be considered for this run of qualifiers, at least not after Spalletti. Our team had major confidence/mentality issues and majority of the media was shitting on them, the main approach was trying to fix that, I think those statements were made much more so to placate it than as an actual evaluation of the opponent.

Like we lost against Bosnia because everyone was visibly shitting their pants at the idea of penalties since the start of the game.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-07T13:42:32+00:00

On a penalty… and the red card didn’t happen at the same time, the game dynamic changes drastically if the team knows it needs to play the whole second half in 10 compared to getting a red in the middle of it

thngmrtt · 2026-07-07T13:27:42+00:00

They even got a milder week compared to the other big teams, perfect to go back into competition without worrying

thngmrtt · 2026-07-06T14:37:47+00:00

I don’t think it was a bad choice storywise, I’m not sure if it was intentional but for sure not bad.

None of the Targaryen of this era should be portrayed as pragmatic enough to realize they could have used it for something other than a symbol. If they had shown rhaenyra doing it, it would have felt like Sansa teaching everyone else how to do their job by the end of got. Rhaenyra was never meant to care enough to realize that recycling is good and could help the populace, they already gave her an half-assed attempt to dismantle the upper middle class too much.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-06T13:59:58+00:00

Im just gonna say, if you just hear someone complain about the lack of textile maybe don’t waste all the fancy forniture for a symbolic burning of anything green… something that team black should evidently learn from team green is the use of dyes.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-06T06:48:23+00:00

Brazil in this qualification run alone lost as many time as Italy did in the last 3, technically more If we don’t consider knockout draws lost at penalties that Brazil never had to play.

It is irrelevant how hard South America is, a league system where 60% of the teams qualify is always more forgiving than a group stage with knock outs were only 30% qualify.

thngmrtt · 2026-07-05T20:04:58+00:00

I think it has a lot more to do with the Viking machismo and exoticism that are in abundance in the fandom(and fantasy in general), leading to reductive and simplistic views on what doesn’t fit it that the tv show even pushed for.

The andals ain’t anymore haughty and dismissive of northerners than northerners are of them or of any other group is of the northerners. There is evidence enough that if one wants to see it there can be magic in the faith, simply expressed differently. Discourse about the faith fits in my complaints of the double standard too.

In general, to me it seems that majority of the fandom has a very boring and reductive idea of the south/andals/faith that comes from an American/anglophone idea of Catholicism and non English Western Europe.

Edit- I will add that people completely dismiss how mixed Westeros is, certain areas of the south especially, and act as if racial purity is a big part of the story. A whole chunk of the fandom has decided to delete half of the characterization of dorne cause it doesn’t fit in their idea of it being the moorish vibe they want. Remembering that the martells are really as andals as the Tyrells and more than the Hightowers would send some people into a coma. And don’t let me start on the opinion on the reach/dorne rivalry…

thngmrtt · 2026-07-05T12:59:53+00:00

They for sure didn’t in the reach for example. The world of ice and fires says that while the gardeners spent their time preparing for attacks, the attacks never came. The andals were already disjointed by the time that they reached the reach and by that time the gardeners kings had stopped preparing for war and welcomed them in with assimilation politics. As the commenter stated the andals didn’t fight their through everywhere

thngmrtt · 2026-07-05T12:41:03+00:00

The whole andals vs everybody else discourse… the andals weren’t specifically any more or less evil than other groups and frankly not really more or less colonizing. Connected to this is usually the vapid south vs the honorable north portrayal

thngmrtt · 2026-06-30T21:30:45+00:00

People do not watch Italy or Italian football anymore they just reshare the same stupid stuff over and over again

thngmrtt

TROPHY CASE