Brazilian coaching ace JORGE Souza de Brito will not only take the reins of the Philippine women's national volleyball team for the 2024 AVC Challenge Cup for Women from May 22 to 29 in Manila, but will also choose who makes the final cut.
It's going to be a tough task for the Brazilian considering the amount of talent at his disposal. Philippine women's volleyball is currently enjoying unparallelled popularity and the national team will be tested by nine Asian teams, a few with world-class pedigree.
Philippine National Volleyball Federation (PNVF) vice president Ricky Palou, concurrent Sports Vision president tasked to oversee operations of the Premier Volleyball League (PVL), said he consulted with a group of coaches and came out with 20 names to make up the national pool for the event.
The PVL was asked by the PNVF to form the national team.
READ: PVL tasked to form, train national women's volleyball team
"We have a pool of 20 (players). It's not yet final because we're waiting for coach Jorge De Brito to give us his inputs into the pool. But basically, we came up with a list of 20 players while waiting for De Brito to look at it and see if he wants to make any changes or if he's satisfied with it," said Palou.
Palou did not disclose the names of the 20 players, but said the selection was thorough and took into consideration the output of the country's best volleyball coaches who submitted the names for De Brito's assessment.
"We'll sit down with De Brito, going to the recommendation of (the PVL coaches). Actually, this pool was recommended by several coaches. They submitted it, they looked at it and we submitted it to De Brito for his comments. We're waiting for his reply. We should be getting that in the next few days," said Palou.
As per an unimpeachable source, among the PVL coaches who drafted the preliminary pool are Creamline's Sherwin Meneses, Choco Mucho's Dante Alinsunurin, Cignal's Shaq delos Santos, Chery Tiggo's Aaron Velez and Nxled's Taka Minowa.
Palou says PVL up for the challenge
Meanwhile, Palou took pride that the PVL was designated to form the Philippine team to compete in a strong international event and said it was an honor to spearhead the country's AVC campaign on home soil.
"We are honored that the Philippine National Volleyball Federation gave us the responsibility of handling the national team for women's (volleyball). They gave us the coaching staff, and we're now discussing with the coaching staff who will compose the national team," said Palou.
Ten teams, including the Philippines, will take center stage in the week-long hostilities at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum. The Philippines is in Pool A alongside Chinese Taipei, India, Iran and Australia.
Pool B features regional powerhouse Vietnam, Indonesia, Kazahkstan, Singapore and Hong Kong.
The coaching chores will be headed by De Brito, formerly head coach of Akari in the PVL. He's currently under contract with the volleyball federation until June this year.
De Brito has a distinguished record that includes being a member of the Brazilian men's volleyball team that won the gold medal in the Barcelona Olympics. His other coaching stints were in Korea, Turkey and Japan.
The AVC Challenge Cup pits second tier teams and does not include powerhouses Japan, China and Korea.
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