The Men's U21 Volleyball World Championship is being held in Jiangmen, China. The first round of the final tournament was held on Wednesday, August 27th, with Japan, who finished second in Pool C, facing off against the host country, China, who finished third in Pool A.
After a fierce full-set match, he lost 2-3 (25-17, 23-25, 21-25, 27-25, 13-15).
Japan scored points mainly through players such as Takuma Kawano, who has also been selected for the senior Japanese national team, and Shunta Ono, who was selected as the U20 Best Outside Hitter, but struggled against China's blocks and the attacks and serves of their opposite player, Li, and lost the match.
As a result, Japan will advance to the 9th to 16th place deciding match, where they will face Argentina on Friday the 29th at 6:00 p.m.
However, in the fifth set, Japan was leading 12-10 until halfway through the match, but there were some questionable decisions, such as an attack that looked like it was going out by the Chinese player being ruled in, and an attack by Kawano that looked like it might be a block touch on China's match point being ruled out.
The challenge system is scheduled to be introduced in the next quarterfinals of this tournament, but it was not used in this match and Japan's protest was not accepted.
Perhaps because of the way the match ended, an argument broke out between the Japanese players and the Chinese coach and players after the match, leaving the match with bitterness.
*The video starts from the 12-10 point in the 5th set.
As in the recent South Korea invitational match, it is not possible to clearly confirm from video whether or not a refereeing error was made, but unfortunately, it is not uncommon for close calls to result in a goal for the host country. I hope that the U21 Japan national team players will use this defeat as motivation to do their best from here on out.
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Photo: Volleyball World
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