Brazil continue to fly as status quo unchanged in Men's VNL

Brazil lined up a somewhat changed squad, but that did nothing to slow their pace at the 2021 FIVB Men's Volleyball Nations League at Italy's Adriatic resort of Rimini as they overcame the hurdle of Iran in four sets on Wednesday and continue to lead the race to the semifinals, top of the table and on a 10-1 record after Day 11.

Fernando Kreling was in charge of the setting for Brazil on Wednesday and Ricardo Lucarelli took care of the scoring for a match high of 20 points.

Brazil's blocking was just a bit too much for Iran to handle, yielding a total of 12 points (three each from Mauricio Souza and Alan Souza), the serving created problems for the Asians' reception and the digging was at times phenomenal.

Iran did manage to take one set and maybe could have challenged the reigning Olympic champions some more, but coach Vladimir Alekno brought his reserves on for the fourth set.

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Poland are becoming more stable and more reliable with each passing match, even as coach Vital Heynen keeps rotating his players. And on Wednesday the reigning world champions produced another solid performance, denying Japan the chance to play their game and getting a 3-0 win that keeps them hot on the heels of Brazil, at 9-2.

Poland outblocked (6-0) and outserved (also 6-0) Japan and dominated the attacking, with Tomasz Fornal getting the match high of 16 points.

Despite some overpowering American blocking (five stuffs from Kyle Ensing alone), France recovered from the shock they got from the Netherlands the previous night and beat USA in four sets to stay within the group of teams at 8-3 and chasing the table leaders.

USA coach once again rotated his players, but France were more decisive in the critical moments of the match. Earvin Ngapeth was the leading of the winning side with 16 points, though USA's Torey Defalco with 21 had the match high.

Serbia, meanwhile, scored their first straight-set win at the 2021 VNL with a sweep of Bulgaria in the Balkan derby and now stand at 8-3 - right on track to make the Final Four.

Pressure from the service line that produced nine direct aces (three by Marko Ivovic) allowed Serbia to open up their game and record an excellent overall 65% (42/65) in attack.

Three players shared the match high, with Ivovic, Marko Podrascanin and Bulgaria's Radoslav Parapunov each scoring 13 points.

Slovenia were exhausted from their previous night's five-setter against Brazil and the Australians carried the momentum of their first win of the tournament the previous morning over Iran.

But this only affected the first set, with VNL rookies Slovenia eventually reacting to gain control of the match and secure their eighth win in 11 games. This improves their record to 8-3 and keeps them very much in the chase for a ticket to the Final Four.

Klemen Cebulj and Rok Mozic both entered the match in the second set and led the scoring for Slovenia on 16 and 14 points respectively - the former with a 67% kill efficiency (14/21).

Further down the table, Russia scored their second win of Week 4, putting an end to Argentina's three-match winning streak, in four sets.

Regular top scorer of Russia Maxim Mikhaylov played only the first set, so Egor Kliuka brought the points (15) in this time, as the defending champions overwhelmed Argentina on the block (14 to 5).

Federico Pereyra, with 16 points for Argentina was top scorer of the game.

In other VNL action on Wednesday, Canada very convincingly shut out Germany for their third win in the tournament, as the European side committed as many as 30 unforced errors in just three sets.

Sharone Vernon was Canada's top scorer on 15 points, though the match high was 16 (including all three of his side's aces) by Germany's Linus Weber.

And Italy took advantage of the Netherlands' long match the previous night to take them down in four sets and climb to tenth place in the standings on a 5-6 record.

Nimir Abdel-Aziz as usual scored the match high of 24 points. On the other side, Alessandro Michieletto and Francesco Recine scored 20 each.

Nimir continues to lead the overall list of the tournament's scorers on 247 points. The 29-year-old Dutch opposite is now just two points short of the 2019 scoring performance of Iran's Amir Ghafour and well on track to break the all-time VNL record of 277 points by Brazil's Wallace de Souza.

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