Thailand continued to struggle against tougher opposition in a straight-sets loss to Japan in their Volleyball Nations League match on Saturday night in Bangkok.
Japan entered the match with plenty of motivation, as they are currently in eighth place in the 16-team tournament. They need a finish in the last eight to book a spot in the finals in Texas later this month.
The Thai women were competitive for all three sets and generated more points from opponent errors, but the Japanese prevailed 25-18, 25-22, 25-20 at Hua Mark Indoor Stadium.
The defeat followed straight-sets losses to Turkey on Thursday and the Netherlands on Tuesday in the third week of VNL round-robin matches.
The only two wins in Thailand’s VNL 2023 campaign — against Canada and South Korea — came in the first week of the tournament in Antalya, Turkey.
The Thai women, ranked 14th in the world, entered this week’s Pool 6 competition in 13th place in the 16-team tournament.
Thailand have one more match remaining in Pool 6, against third-ranked Brazil on Sunday at 8.30pm.
The preliminary phase features three weeks of competition, with each of the 16 teams playing 12 matches.
The top eight teams after the preliminary round qualify for the final phase, which will be held in Arlington, Texas from July 12-16.
Thailand made history last year when they entered the top-eight tournament for the first time.
But this year after losing all their matches in the second week in Brazil — against Germany, the USA, Serbia and Croatia — they entered the third week of competition needing to be near-perfect if they wanted to advance.