Recently, on Tuesday, September 2nd and Wednesday, September 3rd, the Japanese men's national volleyball team played against Bulgaria as a send-off match (training match) for the World Volleyball Championships.
Bulgaria is ranked 15th in the world (as of September 5th), lower than Japan, which is in 5th place, but with the Nikolov brothers at the center, they were the team that Japan lost to 0-3 in a home match in this year's Nations League.
However, with the addition of Ishikawa Yuki and Takahashi Ai, Japan ended up with two consecutive wins, with the first day ending with a 4-0 set score (an additional fourth set was played) and the second day ending with a 3-2 score.
Japan's coach, Tille, used all 15 players on both days to check their playing style.
Ishikawa, Takahashi, and Miyaura are almost certain to be in the starting lineup.
On both days, only three players were in the starting lineup for the first set: outside hitters Yuki Ishikawa and Ai Takahashi, and opposite Kento Miyaura.
These three players are likely to be in the starting lineup for the World Volleyball Championships.
There were some concerns about Ishikawa's condition, but he doesn't appear to have any major issues. Takahashi, whose birthday was on the 2nd, also showed solid play on both offense and defense, and Miyaura, in particular, seemed to be in good form, hitting five service aces on the first day.
On the other hand, I think they are still undecided about the starting lineup for other positions.
Nagatsuyu is the setter, but Oya also shows his strengths.
First, regarding the setters, both Nagatsuyu and Oya were given equal playing time in the two matches against Bulgaria, but it was Nagatsuyu who started on the first day.
Nagatsuyu was also in the starting lineup for this year's Nations League final, and at 192cm tall (for a Japanese player), it's clear that Coach Tiri has high expectations for Nagatsuyu, a large setter. Indeed, many improvements were seen since the Nations League, and on the second day, despite missing the three players mentioned above, they pulled off a comeback victory over Bulgaria.
Of course, Oya's play was also excellent. I especially liked how he was able to use the pipe attack, a back attack from the middle, aggressively and effectively.
Even so, when he had a proper matchup with Bulgaria's Nikolov, he was able to get past Oya's block, so his weakness in blocking cannot be ruled out (the same can be said for Sekita).
The liberos are equally skilled
On the first day, Yamamoto played in the first two sets and Ogawa played in the last two sets, and on the second day, Ogawa played in the first two sets and Yamamoto played in the last three sets.
As for libero, it is very difficult to predict which one Coach Tille will start.
In the Nations League, Yamamoto joined the team late from the third week onwards, so Ogawa started in all matches except for the match against Argentina in the third week.
However, judging from the match against Bulgaria, both liberos were excellent, and it was difficult to see which one Coach Tille would ultimately put on the court as a starter (when he was with the French national team, he had the absolute guardian deity Grubenikov on the team, so he probably didn't have to worry about this at all).
However, personally, I have been playing with Ogawa up to this point this year, so I would like to see him play as a starting libero until the end.
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