(Volleyball Techniques For Beginners)
Lausanne, Switzerland, September 5, 2013 – The 2013 CEV Volleyball European Championship for Women, the first of four continental championships, where the winners qualify for the women's FIVB World Grand Champions Cup kicks off on Friday. The tournament will be co-hosted by Germany and Switzerland.
This will be the third time that the European Championship for women has been co-hosted by two nations with Belgium and Luxembourg having the honours in 2007 and then Italy and Serbia in 2011.
The CEV Volleyball European Championship will end on September 14 and will be held in the following host cities: Berlin (Max-Schmeling-Halle), Dresden (Energieverbund Arena), Halle/Westphalia (GERRY WEBER STADION), Schwerin (Sport –und Kongresshalle) and Zurich (Hallenstadion).
The preliminary round will be played in Dresden, Halle/Westphalia, Schwerin and Zurich while the round of the last sixteen and quarterfinal will take place in Halle/Westphalia and Zurich. The semi-finals and finals will both take place in Berlin.
The sixteen European Championship participants are Germany, Switzerland, Serbia, Turkey, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, the Netherlands, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Belgium, Belarus, Bulgaria, France, Czech Republic.
They will play in four groups of four against each other with the group winners qualifying directly for the quarterfinal. The second and third place teams will play the round of the last sixteen first and the winners of the quarterfinal duels will compete for the medals in Berlin.
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| Germany took the silver medal at last year's European championship |
Current title holder Serbia will no doubt be looking to secure their place on the podium once again this year. Last years’ winners included Germany who took the silver medal and Turkey who left with bronze.
Russia (and its predecessor states) are by far the most successful nation of the European Championship for women have won gold a total of seventeen times.
The World Grand Champions Cup is a quadrennial round-robin competition for men and women. The last edition of the tournament was in 2009 with Brazil coming away with the men’s title for the second consecutive time after remaining unbeaten while in the women’s tournament, Italy picked up their first ever crown. Japan will host the next edition, with the women’s event set to take place from November 12 to 17, 2013 and the men’s from November 19 to 24, 2013.
The FIVB Volleyball World Grand Champions Cup features a total of six teams per gender with the hosts Japan being joined by the continental winners from Asia, Europe, NORCECA and South America with an additional country selected by the FIVB. Africa do not have an automatic spot in the tournament after finishing the 2012 Olympic Games as the lowest ranked confederation amongst the five.
from (fivb.org)
