A rejuvenated Korean women’s volleyball team will look to redeem itself on the international stage.

The women’s national team, coached by Cesar Gonzalez, will take on host Turkiye in the first leg of the FIVB Volleyball Nations League (VNL) 2023, which kicks off on 1 June at 2pm in Antalya, Turkiye.

South Korea crashed to the bottom of the table in the tournament last year, failing to win a single point in 12 matches. The void left by the retirement of big names like Kim Yeon-kyung (Heungkuk Life) and Yang Hyo-jin (Hyundai E&C) after the Tokyo 2020 Olympics was too great.메이저놀이터

This year’s roster is not much different from last year’s.

However, with Han Yoo-mi, who has been a commentator for broadcasters and lovingly advised her juniors, joining the team as a coach and Kim Yeon-kyung as an advisor, the younger players are back on the starting line with hopes that their morale and organisation will be much better than last year.

The Korean women’s volleyball team, which is determined to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, will compete in the VNL, followed by the Asian Championships in September, the Paris Olympic Qualifiers and the Asian Games to boost its international competitiveness.

All three of these events, except the Asian Games, have ranking points that determine the world ranking, and Korea needs to improve its 23rd place ranking as much as possible to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

This year, the women’s qualification tournament will be held in China, Japan and Poland from 16-24 September, and Korea will compete in Group C in Poland with eight other countries, including Poland, Italy, the United States and Thailand.

Twelve nations will compete at the Paris Games, with hosts France securing one spot and six additional spots awarded to the top two finishers in each group at this year’s qualifiers. The remaining five spots will be allocated according to the world rankings on 17 June 2024.

The best-case scenario for Korea would be to qualify for the Olympics from the qualifiers, but it is difficult because there are many countries ranked higher than us.

Therefore, improving our world ranking is a realistic alternative. To achieve this, the women’s volleyball team will compete in the Asian Championships (2-10 September in Thailand) before flying to Poland for the Olympic Qualifiers and then on to Hangzhou for the Asian Games (28-28 September-7 October).

The team’s target for the VNL is at least three wins. In week one, South Korea will face Turkiye, Canada (2 June), USA (3 June) and Thailand (4 June).

The team then travels to Brasilia, Brazil, to face Brazil (15 June), Japan (16 June), Croatia (17 June) and Germany (19 June) before returning to Suwon, South Korea, to close out the qualifiers with Week 3 matches against Bulgaria (27 June), Dominican Republic (29 June), China (1 July) and Poland (2 July).