🌍 The Week in International Sport
Monday July 27th: women's baseball ratings, the Volleyball Nations League finals and more
This year at Plot the Ball, I’m using data to try and better understand the landscape of international team sport. For some background to this project — which I’m calling ‘Rank the Nations’ — you can read my introductory post here.
In today’s edition of The Week in International Sport:
🇯🇵 Japan leading the way in women’s baseball
🇹🇷 Turkey winning a world title in women’s volleyball
🇬🇷 Greece winning a world title in men’s water polo
🇺🇸 The USA winning a world title in women’s water polo
🇵🇱 Poland winning a European title in women’s rugby sevens
🇫🇷 France winning a European title in men’s rugby sevens
As a reminder: the team ratings used in this newsletter are on a zero-to-10 scale, and are calculated based on a nation’s performance in competitive fixtures in a given sport since the start of the 2022 calendar year. (For more detail, click here.)
🇯🇵 Japan lead the first edition of the women’s baseball rankings
Like softball, women’s baseball is really a two-horse race between Japan and the USA. The former is much more even, though: the two have each won three of the last six women’s softball World Cups, but Japan have held the baseball title since 2008.
Like softball, the sport currently uses a distributed World Cup format, too. Last week, the Americans did manage to steal a march on their Asian rivals: they got to play their group-stage matches for the 2027 edition of the tournament first, and closed the gap in the rankings below. Before this edition of the World Cup formally began, Japan had a ‘Rank the Nations’ rating of 9.2 — 0.4 points ahead of the USA. After five American wins by an aggregate scoreline of 102 runs to 12, that margin has halved.
Japan will have an opportunity to extend their lead again at the end of August, when they play their first five games in Taiwan. The hosts — ranked fifth above — will be the second-best team in this second qualifying group, while the sixth-ranked Philippines (5.3) and 10th-ranked Venezuela (3.8) will also be competing there. The nations in third and fourth — Canada (6.4) and Australia (6.1) — were both on the USA’s side of the draw, and qualified for the final stage next July without any real trouble.
🇹🇷 Turkey win the 2026 FIVB Women’s Volleyball Nations League
Turkey (6.2) won their second women’s VNL title over the weekend in Macau. Back in 2023, they beat China in the final; this time, it was Brazil (6.6). (Both times, Melissa Vargas — who featured in the newsletter last month — was named tournament MVP.)
Turkey were pushed hard by Brazil, only outscoring them by 99 points to 93 in total. Their earlier final-stage victories were more convincing: they beat Canada (4.8) and China (6.0) in the quarters and semis, scoring 55% of the points in those matches.
🇬🇷 Greece win the 2026 FINA Men’s Water Polo World Cup
Hosts Australia (4.3) were the only country from outside Europe to make the top eight of this year’s FINA Men’s Water Polo World Cup. They ultimately finished fourth, having beaten defending champions Spain (7.1) in a quarter-final penalty shootout.
Following a second-place finish in 2025 — their first medal at the competition in almost 20 years — Greece (6.6) took World Cup gold for the first time ever this year, beating Hungary (6.1) by a single goal in yesterday’s final.
🇺🇸 The USA win the 2026 FINA Women’s Water Polo World Cup
The women’s World Cup ran concurrently with the men’s, and the final was between the two top-rated teams in my system: the USA (7.3) beat Spain (7.1) by 13 goals to nine. Notably, though, Spain’s semi-final opponent was Russia.
They returned to top-level competition after World Aquatics lifted their ban earlier in the year. After overturning the Netherlands (6.8) at the quarter-final stage, Russia ended up in fourth place after losing the bronze-medal game to Australia (5.9).
🇵🇱 Poland win the 2026 Rugby Europe Women’s 7s Championship Series
Every summer — after the end of World Rugby’s annual global sevens tour — Rugby Europe runs a two-leg European Championship. It’s typically an opportunity to take the sport further afield: the 2026 tournaments were held in Germany and Croatia.
On the women’s side this year, Poland lost in the final of each leg — to France (6.5) in Hamburg, and to Ireland (4.8) in Split — but two second-place finishes were still enough for them to sit at the top of the overall standings.
🇫🇷 France win the 2026 Rugby Europe Men’s 7s Championship Series
After finishing second in Hamburg, France (6.0) won the men’s edition of the Split leg yesterday — and with it the overall European series title. In second place were Italy, who haven’t competed in the World Series for over a decade.
France won despite heavily rotating from their first-choice squad: they named 23 different players in their squads across these two European events, but only five of them had played in the final event of the World Rugby calendar back in June.
That’s all for this edition of Plot the Ball — it’s a slightly shorter newsletter this week, as I’ve spent the last few days packing up and moving across the country! (I’d love to hear from any subscribers in the North East of England.)
The next edition will be published as normal on Monday August 3rd.
