Unstoppable Turkiye sweep Canada to win pool at Men’s Volleyball World Championship

Turkiye swept their last game of the pool stage at the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship in the Philippines and topped the final Pool G standings undefeated. On Wednesday in Quezon City, they shut out Canada, who also advanced to the eighthfinals as pool runners-up on a 2-1 win-loss record. In the first knockout round, the two teams will face the Pool B runners-up and the Pool B winners, respectively, who will be decided in a direct clash between Poland and the Netherlands later on Wednesday.

• Watch the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship on VBTV

Entering the match as the number 16 team in the FIVB World Ranking, Turkiye produced a convincing 3-0 (25-21, 25-16, 27-25) upset of the world’s number eight team Canada. With this result, the European team snatched as many as 16.59 ranking points from their opponents’ bucket and moved three spots up to number 13, while Canada fell to number nine.

Turkiye outperformed Canada in attack by 43-28 in spike kills and that made the big difference in this match. The European side also made fewer unforced errors – 19 against the North Americans’ 24. Opposite Adis Lagumdzija led the way with 15 points, all in swings at a 71% success rate. Outside hitter Efe Mandiraci spiked at a 55% success rate and fired an ace towards a 12-point tally. He was the one who scored the winning point in the heated overtime of the third set.

“Actually, this was our goal before we came here – that we wanted to advance as the leader of the group – and we did it. I am proud of all my teammates and all the staff. All of us did an amazing job and I hope that we will keep going like this, because right now we are really a very good group, a very disciplined group, who has big goals. And I hope that we will catch them,” Turkiye’s middle blocker Marko Matic told VBTV. “We are a young team with a big potential, and now with the new coach, we learned how to be disciplined, how to fight for every ball, how to stay in system… It came with hard work and very good preparation, and now it’s showtime.”

Canada did not fall without a fight. They actually outplayed the Turkish team in serving by 8-3 in aces and matched them in net defense at seven kill blocks each. Opposite Sharone Vernon-Evans (three aces, two kill blocks), middle blocker Fynnian McCarthy (three aces, one kill block), and outside hitter and captain Nicholas Hoag (two aces, one kill block) jointly topped the team’s scorers with eight points apiece.

In the last game of the pool, Japan and Libya will fight for the third place, hoping to finish on a high note before leaving the tournament. The match in Quezon City on Wednesday serves off at 21:40 local time (13:40 UTC).

2025 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship: full schedule and results

Quick links:
2025 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship
VBTV
Volleyball World Facebook
Volleyball World X
Volleyball World Instagram
Volleyball World YouTube
Subscribe to Volleyball World's Newsletter