TEHRAN - After the end of the men’s FIVB Road to Paris Volleyball Qualifiers, the FIVB Volleyball World Ranking has been published in which Iran fell four spots to number 15.

The ranking will eventually determine the remaining five participants in next year’s Olympic volleyball tournament, who will join Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, Poland, the U.S. and hosts France on the way to Paris 2024, volleyballworld.com reported.

Even though the final cut-off is at the end the Volleyball Nations League 2024 Preliminary Phase, the teams that occupy the qualifying positions now are also most likely to occupy them then.

To guarantee the principle of universality, the next Paris 2024 participants will be selected from the continental confederations, which do not have a qualified team yet. With members of the CEV (France, Germany and Poland), NORCECA (Canada and the U.S.), CSV (Brazil) and AVC (Japan) already qualified, the only confederation that falls under that criterion is CAVB.

The remaining four spots at Paris 2024 will go to the four highest-ranked teams, not qualified yet, at the end of the VNL 2024 Preliminary Phase. According to the chart, these four teams would be third-ranked Italy, sixth-ranked Argentina, seventh-ranked Slovenia and ninth-ranked Serbia.

The next teams with 200+ points, who have not qualified yet, are 11th-ranked Cuba (236.96), 13th-ranked Netherlands (214.58), 14th-ranked Türkiye (210.73) and 15th-ranked Iran (207.82). They are the ones who have the best shots at moving up above the red line for Paris and pushing some of the above-mentioned teams below.

There was no change in the top two positions of the World Ranking, with leaders Poland (421.14 points) and runners-up the U.S. (390.91) further widening the distance from third-ranked Italy, while narrowing the gap between each other by over nine points.

The highest upward leap in the World Ranking during the qualifiers was achieved by Bulgaria, who jumped 10 positions from number 30 to number 20, adding a net of 27.87 points to their record. Germany were the team that achieved the highest point gain of 59.34 to climb six positions up. Belgium and Finland also enjoyed substantial upward shifts of five spots, with the Belgians ascending from number 22 to number 17, and the Finns from number 28 to number 23.

Meanwhile, Mexico suffered the highest drop of 37.20 points and 13 positions, from number 21 to number 34. Tunisia descended seven spots to number 25, while Qatar and Iran fell four spots each to number 21 and number 15, respectively.