WHAT basketball is to the Philippines, volleyball is to Poland.
Long touted as the best men’s volleyball team in the world, the Poles carry the unimaginable pressure of living up to their stature as the world No. 1 team for nearly three years now.
For Poland head coach Nikola Grbić, in his third year in charge, it’s not just silver-medal finishes and missing out on podiums that leave their countryfolk underwhelmed.
READ: USA, Poland lead first six teams through to FIVB Worlds knockouts
With a bar so high, even the narrowest of set losses becomes a cause for concern for the volleyball-crazed nation.
“You should come to Poland to see what are the expectations. If you lose the set, everybody is like, ‘what is going on, crisis,” Grbić said.
“These guys are playing under pressure all the time. They wake up with the pressure. They are eating pressure for morning, lunch, afternoon and dinner.
“They are playing in the strong clubs and they are playing in the teams who are winning all the time, so they know how to handle the pressure.”
This tournament, in particular, has a lot of eyes laid on Poland in what has been the first FIVB Worlds in a while that it will compete as challengers than champions.
The Poles were left shell-shocked when their FIVB Worlds three-peat bid came to an end on home soil at the hands of a young Italy side in 2022.
But rather than drowning himself and the team with external narratives, Grbić is keeping busy in keeping Poland in top shape to reclaim lost glory.
“I am not preoccupied with that at all. My preoccupation stays with the technique and performance itself and this is what we have to focus on, so I don't pay particular attention to pressure,” the Polish head coach said.
“Playing as a favorite is much more difficult than playing as an outsider. You don't have nothing to lose and if you win against somebody like us, you will gain so many points in the ranking list.
“If you won against the best, everybody will talk about you, but then you have to win against the team who is below you and everybody is playing like much, much worse than against us, so that's normal.”
Pole position, still
Even as the reigning silver medalists, Poland remains an undeniable title favorite having won the Volleyball Nations League earlier this year.
But not once will this Polish team ever embrace the ‘favorites’ tag despite dropping just one set in the group stage and taking out Canada in the Round of 16.
One game at a time, the world No. 1 looks to stay on pole and let the competition run its course in a bid to win it all again.
“Being a favorite is always more difficult because everybody is expecting, everybody knows that you will win, so there is no satisfaction, right?
“But if you lose, wow, then the music stops. Sooner or later, it will happen. When it happens, I am not going to cry my eyes out. This is sport.
“I hope it will still not be the case while I am a coach of Poland but in general, I don't listen to the noise and that's it.”
Although Grbic's call to not let his players go through social media during the competition often fallls on deaf ears, he remains firm in asserting that the Poles must not let their countrymen get under their skin with the stakes now higher in every succeeding round.
"My advice to them always, especially if some of them are not playing good [...] is not to read the articles in the newspapers, with all due respect for you guys, especially not to go on the comment session because usually there are people who don't understand what we are doing," Grbic said.
"They don't understand what sacrifices these guys are doing. They don't know how hard these guys are working, how much they want to succeed and how much they are giving everything they have, away from their families, with their bodies.
"Nothing good will come out of that so my advice is always don't go to read the comment session. Unfortunately, I don't have so much success in that because they always go there to read.
"Again, it is how it is and I'm trying to tell them to stay focused on the things that we are doing on the court and everything else is less important, not less important, not important at all."
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