On the evening of August 7 and early morning of August 8 (Vietnam time), the indoor volleyball event at the 2024 Olympics will host the first men's semi-final match between the two teams of Poland and the US. The audience present at South Paris Arena 1 as well as the fans watching on television witnessed the match worth the price.
The Polish men's volleyball team is currently the world No. 1 team and despite not going through the group stage very well, the "White Vultures" showed their strength when defeating Slovenia 3-1 in the quarter-finals.
Meeting the US team, the opponent that coach Nikola Grbic and his team have won the last 6 consecutive matches, Poland went through a 5-set match and at times thought they would have to turn to the bronze medal match.
In set 1, there were times when Poland led their opponents to 4 points such as 7-3, 10-6, 17-13, 24-20, but just needed to let their opponents score 3 points in a row once, they fell into a state of psychology with a score of 24-23, but in the end, they still finished set 1 with a score of 25-23.
In set 2, the US team started to take the lead when scoring 4/5 points to lead 6-4, keeping the advantage until set-point 24-23. But Poland equalized and set 2 could only end at 27-25 for the US team.
Set 3 witnessed the incredible collapse of the Polish team when the opponent scored a Serie from 11 to 25, while they could only have 5 points from 9 to 14 and were trailing 2-1.
But the focus in set 4 was another dramatic match, with a score of 25-23 to help Poland tie the score at 2-2.
Entering the deciding set 5, the Polish team quickly created an advantage and could finish early with a lead of 1410. However, once again, the final scores caused an extremely tense atmosphere as the US team shortened the score to 13-14 with a series of 3 consecutive points.
The match when Wilfredo Leon's smash bounced out. The score of 15-13 brought the Polish team to the final of the 2024 Olympic men's volleyball tournament with the opportunity to win the second gold medal after the first time in 1976,
Poland's opponent is host France, after the remaining semi-final ended with a surprising result.
Italy is 1 place above France in the world men's volleyball rankings and finished the group stage at No. 1 in the overall rankings.
In the quarter-finals, they came back to win Japan 3-2 despite being 2 sets behind, so they were somewhat rated higher. However, the final result was surprising when the French team won 3-0 quite well against the world champion - 25-20, 25-21, 25-21.
Thus, the final match of the 2024 Olympic men's volleyball tournament is determined between France and Poland, while the US team will compete for the bronze medal with Italy.
