After 3 weeks of intense play during the Intercontinental Round, the following teams have made it to the Final Round in the Brazilian city of Curitiba.

Finals Match 4: USA vs Serbia

Another team from NORCECA is in the Semifinal Round!

Taylor Sander and Team USA were too hot much to handle for Serbia aka the defending World League Champions. The strong serves from the Americans gave Serbia a difficult time to set up their offense. Serbia had a chance in set 2 but they choked in crucial parts of the game.

Coach Speraw told the media how pleased he is with his team after losing to France the day before.

“It’s always interesting to see how your team is going to respond after you have a disappointing loss like the one yesterday, so I’m most pleased with how we came onto the match, how we won the first two sets and how we held on when Serbia did a nice run. Third set they served really well and they were ahead on the fourth, so I’m really proud of the guys for how they responded there. Serbia is a great team, so this is a great win for us and for this team to be in the semifinals is amazing.”

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Finals Match 3: Russia vs Canada

Canada is in the semifinals!!!

Gord Perrin, Graham Vigrass and Canada demolished the young Russian squad in 3 sets to qualify in the Final 4 for the very first time in Canadian Volleyball history. Isn’t that awesome? Canada was led by newcomer Sharone Vernon-Evans who scored 14 points.

Coach Antiga is very happy with the result. Take note, this is his first season coaching Canada after leaving Poland.

“We’re very satisfied for this qualification and also because even though it wasn’t our best game, we made less mistakes than yesterday and played good volleyball overall. We had to prevail on two very hard first sets and we could take advantage of that position from that point. We are aware also that this result leaves us on a very comfortable place for what’s ahead, so we’re very happy.”

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Finals Match 2: USA VS France

Despite committing 43 errors in one match, Lyneel and France managed to win a 5-set marathon match against Taylor Sander and Team USA. The Americans were ahead in sets 1 and 5 but could not seal the match.

At the post match conference, Coach Speraw could not hide his disappointment.

“I’m obviously disappointed – If we look back at that first set, we were up 20-15 and we ended up with a little regret for not closing it. I do believe we improved a lot over the last five or six weeks, and as a proof of that today we played against France better than on pool play.”

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Finals Match 1: Brazil VS Canada

BRAZIL 3-1 CANADA. After a shaky start, Bruno, Wallace & Brazil were able to stop a resilient Canadian squad who was led by middle blocker Graham Vigrass with 15 points. Canada must defeat Russia to keep their chances of making it to the Final 4.

Brazil has previously hosted the World League Finals in 1993, 1995, 2002 & 2008 BUT they never won the tournament in front of their fans. Will 2017 be a different ending? A happy ending to be exact for the Olympic champions?

Team captain Gord Perrin had nothing but great words to describe their opponents.

“We had some good moments during the game, but we also suffered a lot as their block made things very difficult to us. We faced the best team in the world and we were very excited not only about this opportunity but also for doing it on such amazing venue.”

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Brazil (Hosts)

France (#1)

Serbia (#2)

Canada (#5)

USA (#6)

Final Round Pools

Group I:

Brazil
Russia
Canada

Group II:

France
Serbia
USA

The Final Round is from July 4th – July 8th.

Eliminated Teams

Belgium
Poland
Bulgaria
Argentina
Iran
Italy

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