World League: Portugal in, Egypt out

Apparently Egypt withdrawing from the tournament isn’t actually new news, so I missed it when it first came about. But the news today is that Portugal will replace them in the tournament. The Egyptians withdrew citing “difficulty in complying with tournament regulations,” which whatever that means, it’s nothing good.

But it’s another team to profile. So let’s revise the rundown:

Egypt Portugal
Japan
Iran
Netherlands
South Korea
Finland
Canada
Italy
Argentina
Serbia
Russia
France
Brazil
Germany
Bulgaria
Cuba
USA
Poland

Portugal played the World League last year, and finished dead last. In their 12 pool play matches, they won just 7 sets, meaning they were a pretty easy night at the office for whomever happened to draw them. Portugal’s history in international volleyball is just (barely) north of embarrassing. They’ve never played at the Olympics. They’ve played at just two World Championships. Aside from a 5th place in 2005, Portugal have never had any other single-digit finish at the World League, with 8 other participations.

The Portuguese federation, the Federação Portuguesa de Voleibol, has been around basically as long as organized international volleyball itself has (forming in 1947) , but they’ve never been any kind of a force at the world level. They’ve only won gold medals at the European League, a tournament which seldom draws the best players from its member nations, and something called the Lusophony Games (Lusophone meaning “Portuguese-speaking”), an event which is just laughably limited in scope.

FPV do also organize a professional national championship, known as Liga A1 (not to be confused with Italy’s Serie A1). The league currently boasts 12 teams and has on occasion spawned a lower-level A2 league when there more than 12 teams in the country and some measure of promotion and relegation had to take place. This league does occasionally draw players from other nations, though the truly elite players will probably play elsewhere.

At last year’s World League, Portugal were led mainly by the Ferreira brothers, outside hitters Marco (the elder) and Alex (a player about whom the national program is quite excited). For a few of the team’s early matches, they found a scoring option in fellow outside Valdir Sequeira, though as the tournament went on Valdir (yep, they do the first-names thing just like Brazil) took to more of a bench role. The floor captain Flavio Cruz is listed at ‘Universal.’ Always helpful to have versatile players, though they work best when they supplement standout specialists at the traditional positions, and not when they’re expected to be the standouts themselves.

So are we looking at a w….

I can’t even finish saying it. Put tactfully, I say expect this team to perform like one who were invited to the tournament just weeks before it began. Against a crop of nations which, many of them, didn’t send their best players to the tournament last year, they got dismantled. They were soundly defeated by the Dutch team in the qualifier. There’s no reason to believe they’ll win a match. I hope for their sake that I’m wrong about that, but it’s quite possible that everyone’s odds just went up a little bit with Egypt (hardly a powerhouse, but a respectable side) being swapped out for Portugal.