Bahrain is set to welcome the world’s best 16 junior men’s national teams over the next 10 days. The 2023 FIVB Volleyball Men's U21 World Championship will take place in the capital Manama from Friday, July 7, through Sunday, July 16 to determine the 22^nd junior world champions in volleyball.

The tournament will be streamed live on the Volleyball World YouTube channel.

The U21 World Championship will get underway at 11:00 local time (08:00 UTC) on Friday, with India taking on 2021 bronze medallists Poland on one of the two courts, and Mexico challenging defending champions Italy on the other.

The 16 participating teams were split into four single round-robin pools of four for the first pool stage of the championship to be played over the first three competition days. On each of the three days, the matches in Pool B (Brazil, Egypt, Italy, Mexico) and Pool C (Bulgaria, Canada, India, Poland) will be played during the day session with starting times 11:00 (08:00) and 14:00 (11:00), while those in Pool A (Bahrain, Iran, Thailand, Tunisia) and Pool D (Argentina, Belgium, Czechia, United States) will take place during the evening session with starting times 17:00 (14:00) and 20:00 (17:00).

The top two teams from each of the four pools will advance to single round-robin Pools E and F, while the rest will move to single round-robin Pools G and H. The second pool stage will take place on July 11, 12 and 13.

The top two teams from each of the Pools E and F will advance to the July 15 semifinals, whose winners will progress to the July 16 gold medal match and whose losers will play in the bronze medal match on that same Sunday. Similarly, semifinal and classification matches will be played in each of the lower three four-team tiers of the bracket on the last two competition days to determine the full final standings in the places from 1st to 16th.

It will be the 22^nd edition of the junior world championships. The previous 21 were held from 1977 to 2021. Bahrain will host the event for the fourth time, after doing so in 1987, 1997 and 2019. It is the only country to have organized the competition more than twice.

Russia (also as the Soviet Union) are the most decorated team in the history of the competition, with 10 titles, three silvers and four bronze medals. Brazil are next with four golds, six silvers and four bronzes, while Poland are the only other team to have triumphed as U21 world champions more than once, having three golds and a bronze. Bulgaria, Iran, Italy and Korea are the other four nations to have topped the podium.

While Italy are the defending U21 champions from 2021, it is probably the squads that excelled at the FIVB Volleyball Boys’ U19 World Championship two years ago that should be the ones to watch in Manama over the next days as they are the same generation of players (born in 2003 or later) who will compete for the world honours. At the 2021 U19 tournament in Tehran, Poland claimed the title, Bulgaria took the silver and Iran grabbed the bronze.

In fact, almost the entire U19 Dream Team from 2021 will compete again at Bahrain 2023, with Poland relying on the services of opposite and MVP Tytus Nowik, outside hitter Kamil Szymendera, middle blocker Jakub Majchrzak and libero Kuba Hawryluk, and Bulgaria counting on setter Stoil Palev and outside Aleksandar Nikolov.

The list of past Most Valuable Player awardees in the history of the U21 World Championships starts with the first laureate in 1995 Gilberto Godoy Filho (Giba) of Brazil and continues to 2021 nominee Alessandro Michieletto of Italy and includes a number of other athletes who went to shine as top international stars in senior men’s volleyball. Who will it be this time...?

2023 FIVB Volleyball Men's U21 World Championship: full schedule

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