#Eurovolley2019 qualifications: a short summary until today. Formula and matches.

Legs 5 and 6 of the #EuroVolleyM qualifiers are playing today, but first let’s take a look at how things were left off in August after the teams played their matches for the finals of EuroVolley Men 2019 that will be co-hosted in France, Slovenia, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The last matches will decide the restant participants of European championship, and the competition formula is a bit complicated:
we have 26 nations at the qualifiers, so there are two pools of 3 teams, while the other five have 4 teams each. All pool winners and the five second-placed teams with the best result will participate in the Eurovolley 2019.
But there is a different number of teams across the seven pools, so the results of the matches played with the teams finishing last in the pools of four will be discarded in order to determine the five best runners-up across all pools.
For this reason, only Estonia, Greece and Romania have secured their qualification already, and the rest will be determined in these last matches.

In Pool A, Romania is qualified, Finland and Denmark will decide on Sunday, and both teams need a win to still be considered as one of the top runners-up.
With a victory Denmark also need to show a good performance against Romania on Wednesday, because Finland will play only one match.
A curiosity?
Finland is the only team which playing qualifications that participated at the World Championship in 2018. However, they have to sweat to secure the ticket to the European Championship!

In Pool B Estonia is on the top of the standings since August, and in the group there are also Latvia and Israel. Latvia have no wins yet, but they are the favorites.

In Pool C if Montenegro and Slovakia have three wins, Moldova have two victories, and the ranking of these three teams is uncertain. Slovakia and Moldova will both play with Iceland, really behind.

Also Pool D is a war: Portugal have three wins, Austria and Albania two and Croatia one. Theoretically all is possible!

In Pool E, currently Belarus is in a favourable position with 4/4 victories, however Norway and Spain have two victories. Spain and Belarus meet on Sunday, and in this match the winner is likely to automatically qualify for the finals!

In Pool F Ukraine needs a victory today against F.Y.R. of Macedonia to move to the next round. Switzerland and Hungary also compete in Pool F and they can still qualified.

In Pool G Greece is qualified, while for Azerbaijan, who stands a bit above Luxembourg and Sweden with two wins and two losses, all is possible!

The 12 teams from the qualifiers will join Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Russia, Germany, Serbia, Italy, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland and Turkey.