Finland’s fairytale meets France’s experience: a place in the EuroVolley final awaits

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There could hardly be a greater contrast between the two teams meeting tonight at the Unipol Forum in Assago.

On one side, Finland: a team playing only its second EuroVolley Semi Final, still waiting for its first medal after 20 previous campaigns.
On the other, France: eight-time Semi Finalists, seven-time medal winners and reigning Olympic champions, looking to return to the Gold Medal match for the first time since 2015.

The second Semi Final of EuroVolley 2026 begins at 21:00, with a place in Saturday’s final at stake.

It will be the ninth meeting between Finland and France at the European Championship.
France have won six of the previous eight, while Finland have won twice, both times by 3-1, in 1971 and 1983. Across those eight matches, 925 points have been scored: 432 by Finland and 493 by France.
Their first encounter was also Finland’s first-ever EuroVolley match, when France won 3-0 in 1955!
One of Finland’s two victories came in Imola in 1971, a 3-1 success in the Pool for 13th place. That remains the only EuroVolley meeting between the teams played in Italy.
France have won the last three European Championship encounters: 3-0 in 1997, 3-1 in 2011 and 3-0 in the 2019 Eighth Finals in Nantes. Stephen Boyer scored 19 points for France in that 2019 match, while Urpo Sivula and Tommi Siirilä were Finland’s leading scorers with 11 and 10 respectively.
There is even a personal link to that 2011 meeting.
Finland’s current head coach Olli Kunnari was still a player then and scored 10 points in Finland’s 1-3 defeat!

Andrea Giani, meanwhile, has never faced Finland at EuroVolley as a coach. Tonight will be his 44th match in charge at the competition.
Finland have also struggled against reigning Olympic champions at this tournament, losing all three previous meetings: 1-3 against the Soviet Union in 1983, 0-3 against the Netherlands in 1997 and 0-3 against Russia in 2015 in Busto Arsizio.

But there is an extraordinary piece of history within reach.

If Finland defeat France, they would become only the second team to beat the reigning World Champions and reigning Olympic Champions — when those are different opponents — at the same EuroVolley. Czechoslovakia achieved that feat in Milan in 1971, defeating reigning World Champions East Germany 3-0 and reigning Olympic champions Soviet Union 3-0.
And Finland already know what it is like to beat France in a major tournament. They won the most recent competitive meeting between the teams, 3-2 in the 2025 World Championship. Joonas Jokela scored 20 points for Finland, Petteri Tyynismaa added five kill blocks and Jean Patry scored 23 for France.

Tonight, however, the stakes are considerably higher.

Finland reached the Semi Finals by beating reigning World Champions Italy 3-2 in the Quarter Finals, returning to this stage for the first time since 2007.
That 2007 tournament remains the high point of Finnish men’s volleyball at the European Championship. Finland reached fourth place, losing the Semi Final 2-3 to Spain in Moscow before falling 1-3 to Serbia in the Bronze Medal match. Kunnari was a player in that Finnish team.

Now, 19 years later, he is leading the team from the bench.

Finland can reach the Gold Medal match for the first time.
And whatever happens tonight, this tournament has already rewritten their EuroVolley record.
They have never won a medal in their 20 previous campaigns — the most editions played without a medal among both men’s and women’s European Championships. Their best results after 2007 were Quarter Final appearances in 2011 and 2013, followed by Play Off appearances in 2015 and 2017 and Eighth Final appearances in 2019 and 2021.

This year, everything has changed.

Finland have already won six matches at a single EuroVolley for the first time. Their last four matches have all gone to five sets, and a fifth consecutive tie-break tonight would make them the first team ever to play five consecutive five-setters at a single EuroVolley.
They have already played five tie-breaks in this tournament, winning four and losing one. The all-time record is seven five-setters by the Netherlands in 1958.

The numbers also show just how much Finland have relied on their attacking leaders. Luka Marttila has scored 136 points and Joonas Jokela 133, making them the two highest-scoring Finnish players at a single EuroVolley since 2011. Both have already surpassed Urpo Sivola’s 93 points from 2021.
Marttila has another record of his own. His 19 aces are the most by a Finnish player at a EuroVolley since 2011.
Finland have also been remarkably effective in Italy.
Their EuroVolley record on Italian soil stands at 8-5, across appearances in 1971, 2015 and 2026.
More broadly, their 2026 season has been extraordinary. Finland have won 16 of their 17 competitive matches across the European League and EuroVolley. Their only defeat came against Estonia, 2-3, in the EuroVolley Pool Phase on 17 September.
For context, the Finns won 12 competitive matches combined in 2024 and 2025.

This is Finland’s 21st EuroVolley appearance and their tenth in a row, stretching from 2007 to 2026. Their first participation came in 1955.
They have also already secured qualification for EuroVolley 2028 by reaching the Final Four of the 2026 European League, a competition they went on to win.
Finland defeated the Netherlands 3-1 home and away in the European League final, winning all ten of their matches in three or four sets. Marttila finished as the competition’s third-highest scorer with 167 points, while Miika Haapaniemi recorded 23 kill blocks, the highest total of any player.

There is, however, another historical target tonight. The winner of the European — or Golden — League has never gone on to win EuroVolley in the same year.
The best results achieved by a European/Golden League winner at the subsequent EuroVolley in the same year were silver medals for Russia in 2005 and Slovenia in 2015.
Finland also won the 2025 European Golden League under Kunnari, defeating Czechia 3-1 in Brno. Marttila scored 23 points in that final and finished as Finland’s leading scorer in the competition with 128 points.
The Finnish progression has also been visible on the world stage. They reached the Last 16 at the 2025 World Championship, where Belgium ended their run with a 3-0 victory. In the Pool Phase, Finland lost 3-2 to Argentina after leading 2-0, defeated France 3-2 and beat the Republic of Korea 3-1.
Marttila was the third-ranked receiver at that World Championship, with 37 successful receptions and a 35.24% figure.
His coach knows the European Championship stage from another perspective. As a player, Kunnari was included in five Finnish EuroVolley squads between 2007 and 2015.

France arrive in Assago with a very different history.
This is their eighth EuroVolley Semi Final, following appearances in 1987, 1997, 2003, 2009, 2015, 2019, 2023 and now 2026. They reached the Gold Medal match in 1987, 2003, 2009 and 2015.
France won four of their first five Semi Finals but have lost their last two: 2-3 against Serbia in Paris in 2019 and 0-3 against Italy in Rome in 2023.
Their most recent Semi Final victory came in 2015, when they defeated Bulgaria 3-2 in Sofia after recovering from 0-2 down in sets. France went on to win the title that year.

There is another connection between that tournament and tonight’s match. Giani was Slovenia’s coach in 2015 and lost the final against France.
France have won seven EuroVolley medals overall: one gold, four silver and two bronze. Their most recent medal was that gold in 2015. Since then, they have reached the Final Four in both 2019 and 2023, but lost the Semi Final and Bronze Medal match on both occasions.
Their international credentials, however, extend well beyond the European Championship, as France have won two Olympic gold medals, in Tokyo in 2021 and Paris in 2024, compared with one EuroVolley title.
Yet they have never won a EuroVolley medal as reigning Olympic champions.

Only one other European Olympic champion failed to win a EuroVolley title while holding Olympic gold: Poland, Olympic champions in 1976, who took silver at EuroVolley in 1977 and 1979. Russia, including the Soviet Union, the Netherlands and Serbia as Yugoslavia all won at least one European Championship as reigning Olympic champions.
France’s EuroVolley record in Italy is 12 wins and six defeats. Their last two matches on Italian soil, however, both ended in defeat: the 2023 Semi Final and Bronze Medal match in Rome.
This year’s route has been much cleaner. France defeated Portugal 3-0 in the Eighth Finals and Romania 3-0 in the Quarter Finals. Like Poland, they have an opportunity to become the first team to record 3-0 victories in the Last 16, Quarter Final and Semi Final at the same EuroVolley.

France are also about to reach another statistical milestone. Their record stands at 123 wins and 98 defeats, and tonight will be their 222nd EuroVolley match. That will take them past Russia, including the Soviet Union, and Serbia, including Yugoslavia and Serbia & Montenegro, as well as Bulgaria, each with 221, for the second-most matches played in the competition.
Only the Netherlands have lost as many EuroVolley matches as France, with 98.
There is one area, however, where France will want to reverse a recent trend. They have lost four of their last five EuroVolley matches that went to a fifth set, including their last three deciding sets.
That is a striking contrast with their 2015 championship campaign. France became the only EuroVolley winners to win two matches in the same tournament after falling 0-2 behind: against Italy in the Pool Phase and against Bulgaria in the Semi Final, both eventually won 3-2.
Individually, Théo Faure leads France’s scoring in 2026 with 98 points, followed by Mathis Henno with 82.
Faure needs just two points to become the third French player since 2011 to score at least 100 points at a single EuroVolley. The two previous players to reach that mark were Stephen Boyer, with 158 in 2019, and Antonin Rouzier, with 119 in 2015.
France finished fourth at EuroVolley 2023 after losing 0-3 to Italy in the Semi Final and 2-3 to Slovenia in the Bronze Medal match. Barthélémy Chinenyeze was their leading scorer with 75 points.

This is France’s 32nd EuroVolley appearance. Only Italy, with 33 including 2026, and Bulgaria, also with 32 including 2026, have appeared as many times.
France won silver at their EuroVolley debut in 1948. They returned in 1951 and have missed the tournament only once since then, in 1995, when they finished bottom of their qualifying group behind Romania, Türkiye and Slovenia.
Their only World Championship medal is a bronze from 2002.
The 2025 World Championship was a particularly unusual tournament for the Olympic champions. France were eliminated in the Pool Phase with a 1-2 record, after results of 3-0, 2-3 and 2-3. They became only the second Olympic champions to be eliminated in the first group stage of a World Championship, following the United States in 1990, when they finished 0-3.
Their 2026 VNL campaign also ended earlier than expected. France finished 11th with a 6-6 record, their first failure to reach the Quarter Finals since 2019. Henno was their leading scorer with 189 points and also topped the Best Receivers ranking with 333 total receptions, including 93 successful ones, for 27.93%.

And then there is the man on the French bench.

Andrea Giani has reached the EuroVolley Semi Finals four times as a coach: with Slovenia in 2015, Germany in 2017 and France in 2023 and 2026. Only Zoran Gajic, with five, and Julio Velasco and Andrea Anastasi, with four each, have also reached at least four Semi Finals as coaches.
Giani is now coaching France after winning Olympic gold in Paris in 2024 and the VNL in 2022 and 2024.
This is his sixth EuroVolley as a head coach. He led Slovenia in 2015, Germany in 2017, 2019 and 2021, and France in 2023 and 2026.
More remarkably, he is the only coach to have led a team at each of the last six EuroVolley editions, from 2015 through 2026.
Tonight, he can make another piece of history.
If France reach the Gold Medal match, Giani would become the first coach to take three different teams to the EuroVolley final. He lost the 2015 final with Slovenia, 0-3 against France, and the 2017 final with Germany, 2-3 against Russia.
His playing career is equally distinguished. Giani won four gold, one silver and one bronze medal at EuroVolley and is one of seven players to have won six medals in the competition.

So Finland–France brings together two completely different EuroVolley stories.
The Finns are chasing the first medal in their history, after finally returning to the Semi Finals 19 years after their previous appearance. They arrive having won 16 of their last 17 competitive matches in 2026 and having already defeated the reigning World Champions in this tournament.
France are Olympic champions, seven-time EuroVolley medallists and eight-time Semi Finalists. They have the experience, the history and a coach who is trying to write a chapter that no EuroVolley coach has written before.

But there is one thing both teams know already: this match will not be decided by history.
At 21:00 in Assago, Finland will try to turn the most remarkable campaign in its European Championship history into a first-ever final.
France will try to make sure the story continues in a very different direction.

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