Brazil sweep Germany and take the last spot in the semis

South American powerhouse Brazil will complete the semifinal lineup of the Volleyball Nations League 2025, joining Italy, Poland and Japan among the national teams that will fight for the title of the seventh edition of the tournament over the weekend in Łódź.

The second-best team in the Preliminary Phase, Brazil dominated Germany to secure an emphatic 3-0 (25-19, 26-24, 25-14) victory at the Atlas Arena on Thursday and claim the fourth and last spot in the tournament’s semifinals.

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The Brazilians will now face Japan, which earlier on Thursday, eliminated Türkiye, on Saturday, at 20:00 local time (18:00 GMT), in a rematch of last year’s VNL semifinals. The other semifinal duel, reuniting Italy and Poland, at 16:00 (14:00 GMT), is also a repeat of the sixth edition of the tournament.

Undefeated in their last 11 VNL matches, Brazil relied on Olympic medalists Rosamaria Montibeller and Gabriela ‘Gabi’ Guimarães to score the points they needed to beat the Germans in straight sets. While the opposite tallied 13 points (all in kills) to have her second-best performance in the VNL 2025 so far, the team captain added 12, with ten kills and two blocks.

“The most important moment of the VNL is now, and I think our team is growing,” Rosamaria said. “We did an amazing job so far, but we want to keep growing. Germany played great during the entire VNL, and we needed to be very patient today and to focus on what we had to do. I hope we can keep doing this in the semifinals.”

On the German side, outside hitter Lina Alsmeier, who left the match during the third set due to an ankle injury, was the most productive, with 11 points (all in kills). Fellow outside hitter Lena Stigrot and middle blocker Anastasia Cekulaev contributed eight points each.

“This VNL was certainly the best that we played,” middle blocker and team captain Camilla Weitzel reflected. “That makes it extra sad for us that we exit like this. We wanted to play better, but Brazil were the best team, and congratulations to them. It was an amazing experience, and we found a really good rhythm together. That’s what we’re going to take to the World Championship. We saw today that there’s a long way for us to go, but we’ll get there.”

Brazil dominated Germany at the net, beating them in kills (39 to 36) and blocks (11 to five), but were behind in aces (three to five). The South Americans also did a good job of keeping their errors low, as they gave up only 11 points to the Europeans’ 23.

Volleyball Nations League 2025: full schedule and results

Set to play in the VNL semifinals for the sixth time in seven editions, Brazil will make another attempt to win their first title. The South Americans took silver in 2019, 2021 and 2022 and finished fourth in 2018 and 2024.

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