Major honours
Through the 1980s, Brazil was a team overflowing with talent but short on results. The men's gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics changed that, and afterward Brazil became a fixture in finals for both men and women for more than two decades. Under coach Bernardinho, the men's team won three straight World Championships in 2002, 2006 and 2010, Olympic gold at Athens in 2004, and gold on home soil at Rio in 2016, and won the World League a record nine times before it was discontinued in 2018. The women's team, led by coach Jose Roberto Guimaraes and captain Fabiana Claudino, won back-to-back golds at Beijing 2008 and London 2012. The physical foundation for this success is the Center for Volleyball Development in Saquarema, which opened in 2003, where every national-team age group trains together. The back-row defense and fast transition attack perfected by libero Sergio Santos became the standard grammar of 2000s volleyball.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
The matchup with Italy, beaten in the 2004 Athens final, defined 2000s men's volleyball, and the 2012 London final, in which Brazil led two sets to none before Russia came back to win, remains the memory Brazilian volleyball feels most keenly to this day.