The teams in Pool E have had a very forgettable 2021. The top three seeds didn’t add a single point to their Olympic rankings at a world tour event this year. Polish pair Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek have lost more matches than they have won. Chilean cousins Marco and Esteban Grimalt have been even worse. Brazilian gold medalist Bruno is happy to be alive. He had the most serious case of COVID of any Olympic athlete in Tokyo. The virus put him in the ICU for five days last February. Zouheir Elgraoui and Mohamed Abicha from Morocco’s Olympic dreams were literally resurrected from the dead.
These teams may not be happy with the way they got here, but for the last three years, they have only had one tournament in mind. This one. By qualifying, they achieved part one of their goal. What has happened so far this year is completely irrelevant as they step onto the sand. These guys have shown they can win tournaments. So throw out what has happened so far this year and get ready to watch these guys explode.
Here is your men’s Pool E Olympic preview.
*Statistics in the graphics below include International and Continental events sanctioned by the FIVB between September 1, 2018 and June 30, 2021. This includes all rounds of the Continental Cups and the Olympic Qualification Tournament. Domestic tournaments are not included.
Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek
Grzegorz Fijalek and Michal Bryl are the top seed in Pool E, but I wouldn’t call them the favorites here. They struck gold for the first time as partners on the World Tour in Doha, 2020. Their gold medal match was played in front of an empty stadium as Qatar started their lock down procedures due to the brand new coronavirus. That victory didn’t come out of nowhere. They were among the world’s best in 2019, collecting two silver and two bronze medals along with six other top 10 finishes. Unfortunately, they didn’t carry any momentum from 2019 into the Olympic year. They have entered five tournaments in 2021 and never made it past the second round dropped from 3rd place to 5th in the Olympic rankings. Still, fifth is a pretty impressive place to finish the three year race for Tokyo.
This will be Fijaleks third Olympics making him the most experienced Olympian in this pool. He finished 5th with Mariusz Prudel in London where he narrowly missed the semifinals and a chance at a medal. He was eliminated in the quarterfinals where by a heartbreaking score of 17-21, 21-16, 15-17 to eventual silver medalists Alison and Emanuel. Bryl is a double World Champion at the youth level, winning both the U19 and U21 crown in 2012 and 2014. They know how to win on the big stage and apparently they know how to win in an empty stadium. Maybe that is the perfect recipe for success at this bizarre Olympic tournament.
Bruno and Evandro
This team feels like it was created in a mad volleyball scientist’s laboratory. Evandro is nearly seven feet tall, serves harder than anyone else in the world and sets the ball with surprising precision. Bruno is an Olympic gold medalist with near perfect fundamentals, a great volleyball mind and the ability hit any part of the court. They have both won World Championships, too.
Their first tournament together was at the start of 2019. It is no coincidence that that was the start of this Olympic qualification quad. This partnership has one purpose, to win Olympic gold. They have not been as dominant as expected, but they have had flashes of brilliance. They have also had some moments of frustration where they seem to bring out the worst in one another.
As news of players missing the Olympics due to positive test breaks every day, we are very thankful that none of them are seriously ill. Bruno knows what a serious case feels like. He had to be hospitalized for 14 days and has taken a long time to recover. He missed the Doha tournament and when he made his return in Cancun the effects of his serious illness were evident. At their most recent tournament in Gstaad, he looked like he was back to the old Bruno. They finished fifth in Switzerland, losing a very exciting and close three setter to Cherif and Ahmed, but it was the best the Brazilians have played as a team in a while.
The Grimalt Cousins
The Grimalt cousins are the third team in this group that have had a forgettable run into these Olympics. They were on top of the Olympic rankings after back to back gold medals to start 2019. They slipped in the rankings throughout 2019 and their place in the Olympics came under tremendous pressure this year. Were it not for a silver at the South American championships last March, they’d be watching the Olympics from home. In the last weeks of qualification they saw Samoilovs & Smedins pull to within 20 ranking points but fall just a short. These guys are a good team that hits the ball very hard, but they have been very beatable this year. On the world tour they have compiled a 4-12 match record and gone out of tournaments from the qualification round twice and from pool play on two other occasions. This is not the most difficult group in Tokyo, so they have a good chance of escaping early elimination, but I don’t see them doing much beyond that.
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Zouheir Elgraoui and Mohamed Abicha
Zouheir and Mohamed are even more fortunate to be Olympians than Esteban and Marco. They qualified for Tokyo through the African Continental Cup, but they were actually eliminated from that competition on December 7, 2019. Morocco went to Tunisia to play the opening round and failed to advance to the next round. The pandemic threw the African Continental Cup into chaos and when the African Confederation restarted the competition this year, they put out a bid for a host. Morocco won the bid, meaning their men were back in the running as hosts of the final two rounds. Zouheir and Mohamed took full advantage of their second chance and won five times in a row to thrill their fans on the beautiful Agadir beach and claim Africa’s spot in Tokyo.
Mohamed is 41 years old and deserves to be an Olympian as much as anyone in Africa for his long term commitment to the game. As a team, these two played in the 2017 World Championships in Vienna and the 2019 version in Hamburg. They finished 33rd both times, with an 0-6 record on that stage. In 2019 they were in Bryl and Fijalek’s pool, so they have experience against the team they will face first.
Previews of the rest of the pools
If you are looking for previews of the rest of the pools, here are the links.