In other developments at the 31st FIVB World Congress on Tuesday, the General Assembly unanimously approved an important change in Volleyball rules of having up to 14 players in each team, with a compulsory two libero players on the list. FIVB President Dr. Rubén Acosta said the rule change, which is an increase from 12 players and will not allow both liberos on-court at the same time, will be mandatory for all competitions starting from January 1, 2009. Confederations and National Federations will be free to implement the rule after the Olympic Games.
The Congress also agreed to empower the FIVB Board to decide the immediate use of a lower-pressure ball in order to increase the length of rallies and for the MVA200 to be the official game ball during the Beijing Olympic Games.
The General Assembly passed the proposal that an Olympic qualification event similar to that in Volleyball be added to the FIVB Beach Volleyball Olympic qualification process from 2012 for all teams who have completed participation in eight World Tour tournaments without qualifying for the Olympic Games. The event will qualify three teams per gender and remain under exclusive FIVB television and marketing control.
Congress approved the Board decision regarding International Transfer Certificates (ITCs) to help the development of local players, protect the identity of National Leagues and stop monopolies of financially strong Clubs. From the 2010-11 season, Clubs will be free to engage as many players as they want from other National Federations, but when they come to play the number of ITC players on court at any one time is preferably set at two. Notwithstanding, a National Federation may authorize one extra ITC player on court per team.
It was reaffirmed to the General Assembly that National Leagues are allowed to have a playing season of seven months between October 15 and May 15 of the following year.
The Congress agreed with and confirmed the continental allocation of places for the 2010 FIVB World Championships after the end of the application window for the tournament on June 30, 2008. There are 212 teams registered for the tournaments, 112 Men’s teams for the event in Italy and 100 Women’s teams in Japan. The vacancies are as follows: Women; Asia (4), Africa (2), Europe (8), North and Central America (6), South America (2). Added to these numbers are Russia as 2006 FIVB World Champions and Japan as 2010 organiser. Men; Asia (4), Africa (3), Europe (8), North and Central America (5), South America (2). Added to these numbers are Brazil as 2006 World Champions and Italy as 2010 host organiser.
The election of Russia’s Stanislav Shevchenko as Board of Administration Member from Europe was endorsed by the Congress.
The General Assembly heard progress reports from the future organisers of the 2008 Olympic Games, 2009 Grand Champions Cup in Japan, 2009 Beach Volleyball World Championships in Stavanger, Norway, 2009 Women’s Junior and Girls’ Youth World Championships in Mexico, 2009 Boys’ Youth World Championships in Italy, 2010 Women’s World Championship in Japan, 2010 Men’s World Championship in Italy and 2012 Olympic Games in London as well as the five Confederations’ reports for 2007-08.
You can leave a response to this post, or trackback from your own site.
There are 5 comments to this entry
Wow! That was a lot of information…
Excited to see the implementation of these changes with the sport.
It’s good to see that volleyball continues to grow and develop! YEY!
[Reply]
Thanks for appreciating it. All information are found in the FIVB website. It is also good to know that the next FIVB president will be Jizhong Wei, who happens to be the AVC president. It will not be far to think that RP will see again FIVB international sanctioned matches played. As for the meantime, we are contended with our local competitions that becomes more exciting and thrilling to watch. Cheers!
with Jizhong Wei as the next FIVB president, I do hope that Philippines will be chosen as venue for at least a single leg of the World Grand Prix in 2009, similar to the time when the Russsian, Cuban, Brazilian, and Italian teams visited us in the early 2000’s. Those games were then held at the ULTRA.
[Reply]
Gentleman,
Greetings.It has been an eventful olympic games as far as volleyball is comcerned since we saw the advent/revival of team USA led admirably by the MVP Clayton Stanley on the field and by the genial Kiwi Hugh McCoughteon of the field.Overall it was great for team USA with the men winning gold,the women geting the silver and winning both the men/women gold medals in beach volleyball.
As regards the new rules being contemplated i.e. introduction of two libero’s,increasing the bench strength to eight(totally having fourteen players) and reducing the airpressure and changing the ball,I feel in all probability these changes are going to hurt the puritan’s a lot.The biggest change initiated was the introduction of the rally system of scoring,followed by the introduction of libero,allowing the ball to make contact with the net on serve also have caused enough heartburn for the diehard volleyball fan.It was contemplated at one time to make it discretionary for the first referee to blow the whistle for a net violation/net contact of the block both by the attacker and the blocker.Thank god,that plan has been shelved,otherwise it would led to lot of favouritism/bipartisan attitude.
The introduction of two libero’s to ensure more defence albeit with only one being on the field would defy logic.You have to ensure that both the libero’s are on the field to ensure better defence,as now you have your libeo always playing at the left extreme of the court i.e. zone number five.If the other libero is allowed to play then ,toghether they can cover the court better by dividing the backcourt in to two imaginery halves and leaving one attacker free for back court attaack.As we had seen in the just concluded olympics inspite of the fact that they have reduced the air pressure and also the new ball was played it didn’t effect the pattern of play.The game was not that defencive.Attackers did make a mince meat of the balls set perfectly.
Well,this is my assessment having been a volleyball player myself at the national level for my country India.
[Reply]
Hmm, you’ve got an interesting point there regarding the two-libero rule. I guess the FIVB didn’t really want a drastic change yet so there should still be just one libero at all times inside the court…