Women's World Championship 2022 - News

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Serbia celebrate after championship point

The FIVB Women’s Volleyball World Ranking has a new leader! Serbia are the champions of the recently completed FIVB Volleyball Women’s World Championship 2022, and also the new number one ranked team in the world.

At the start of the Netherlands-Poland 2022 tournament, Serbia were fifth, but as they progressed unbeaten through the competition to defend their title, they rose all the way to the top of the ranking, adding as many 68 points to their overall score. It was the highest jump among all participating teams, both positionally and in terms of points.

Interestingly, after winning 11 consecutive matches in a row and just before their 12th victory in Saturday’s gold medal match, Serbia were still only third in the chart, with the other finalists Brazil leading and bronze medallists Italy in second. However, the straight-set sweep of the number one team propelled the southern European nation to the very top, with 393 points, or two clear of reigning Volleyball Nations League and European champions Italy.

Brazil and Italy, who were the number two and three teams at the start of the World Championship, swapped their positions, while previous leaders United States fell to fourth.

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Poland after their Phase 2 victory against USA

The next highest upward jump in the ranking during the World Championship was achieved by Poland and Canada. Thanks to their results at the tournament, they both climbed three positions, Poland to join the top 10 and Canada to take 14th.

Four more World Championship participants improved their rankings thanks to their results at Netherlands-Poland 2022. Japan, Belgium, Puerto Rico and the Czech Republic all ascended by one position each to 6th, 11th, 17th and 18th place, respectively.

Between fourth-ranked USA and 10th-ranked Poland, the teams of China, Japan, Türkiye, Russia and the Dominican Republic, in that order, complete the top 10.

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Kotona Hayashi was a key player for Japan

Kazakhstan and Croatia, who failed to win any of their matches at the World Championship, suffered the worst drops of seven spots each. The Asian team descended from 39th to 46th while the Europeans fell from 20th to 27th. In terms of points lost, it was Croatia and Cameroon that damaged their record the most, by 36 points each, followed by USA with 31.