Brazil in charge of Men's VNL as Week 3 wraps up

Brazil are all alone at the top of the standings in the 2021 FIVB Men's Volleyball Nations League after an assertive win over Poland, Friday night to wind up Week 3, in what was a clash of the table leaders - but there's now four teams - Poland, France, Slovenia and Serbia - hot on the heels of the South American powerhouse.

It was supposed to be a rematch of the last two FIVB Volleyball World Championships finals - but unlike the occasions in 2014 and 2018, this time Brazil were totally dominant.

Wallace de Souza was on fire, as he smashed 17 spikes from 27 swings for an exceptional 63%. This, plus a block, brought the 33-year-old Olympic champion to a match high of 18 points.

Poland really only resisted in the second set, when they denied Brazil three set points before Yoandy Leal forced a block error on Wilfredo Leon to give the South Americans a two-set lead.

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Klemen Cebulj blasted 32 points to lift Slovenia to yet another incredible win in five sets over defending champions Russia, becoming the first player of this year's VNL to make the list of those that have scored 30 points or more in a single match.

Cebulj was phenomenal in attack with 68% (27/40) and added three blocks and two aces as VNL rookies Slovenia overcame the Russian block.

USA presented yet another lineup on Friday, with Joshua Tuaniga setting, but that didn't confuse Serbia, who produced moments of excellence - just enough for an emphatic four-set win that keeps the Balkan side's goal of a ticket to the semifinals in sight.

It was a close first set, but Aleksandar Atanasijevic served a thunderbolt at set point that Brenden Sander could never return, before Serbia took off to a quick 6-0 lead in the second, building up towards a two-set advantage.

USA did pull one back, but Serbia were overwhelming in the fourth, leading by as many as five points at 22-17. Though USA did react with a 6-1 run to draw level, the 2019 silver medallists never got a shot at a tie-break as Marko Podrascanin put it away on Serbia's third match point.

Uros Kovacevic for Serbia and Torey Defalco for USA shared the high score of the match with 22 points each.

And France regrouped after their shock by Slovenia the previous day, though Canada took them by surprise in the first set and they had to recover for their four-set win.

Setter Antoine Brizard came on in the third set to substitute Benjamin Toniutti, but that didn't change the flow of the game, as Kevin Tillie continued to score for a match high of 17 (shared with Canada's Eric Loeppky).

Earlier in the day, Germany took advantage of as many as 41 unforced errors to hand Iran their second back-to-back tie-break defeat.

Saeid Marouf was back again setting for Iran and Saber Kazemi delivered a match high of 27 points, but Germany reacted with remarkable calm and some well-distributed scoring from Linus Weber (15), Denys Kaliberda (13) and Florian Krage (13), while Tobias Krick provided four of his team's 13 blocks.

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With Federico Pereyra firing off 22 points, Argentina denied Japan a third consecutive win, pressing from the service line and dominating on the net for a four-set win.

It might have been a bit easier for the South Americans, had they managed to convert any of their six set points in the first before Akihiro Yamauchi got the sideout and Tatsuya Fukuzawa made the final kill to give Japan the early lead.

And Italy have now four wins from their nine matches with their latest over Australia who gifted their opponents almost a set's-worth of unforced errors (23) and remain winless.

Gianluca Galassi, Alessandro Michieletto and Giulio Pinali each scored a match high of 13 points - the only players across both teams to venture into double digits.

Elsewhere at the 2021 VNL, Bulgaria ended a six-match losing streak with a five-set win over the Netherlands.

Overall top scorer of the tournament Nimir Abdel-Aziz nearly added the day's second '30+' scoring, but stopped at 29 (though enough to keep him atop the list of the tournament's best scorers). But it was the 31 unforced errors that the Netherlands conceded in the match (to Bulgaria's 22) that made the difference.

It was Bulgaria's second win in the tournament; the Netherlands remain at 1-8.

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