Iran edges past Ukraine in FIVB U-21 world championship
Iran’s national under-21 volleyball team has registered its second consecutive victory at the preliminary round of the 2017 Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) Volleyball Men's U21 World Championship in the Czech Republic, defeating the Ukrainian squad.
On Saturday, the Persians, who had sealed their first win of the tournament by seeing off Italy 3-0 (25-22, 25-19 and 25-21) the previous day, had to do it the hard way in a Pool C encounter against Ukraine at the Budvar Arena in the southern Czech city of České Budějovice.
The Iranian side took the first two sets 25-19 and 25-21, before the European side overcame a two-set deficit and won the third and fourth sets 25-23 and 25-20 to take the match into the tie-break.
Iranians eventually emerged victorious at the end of the five-set thriller, and claimed the decider 15-13.
“This match was very important for us, if we could have won this, we could go to another level – and we did! Ukraine was not playing on their top level yesterday but today they were very strong and ticked all the boxes of strong volleyball play. My players are tired, yesterday was a hard match and now I’m very happy with this result,” Iran’s head coach Behrouz Ataei said after the game.
“The main problem of our play is our attack. We did not make the most out of it today. We were very weak in our attack during the first two sets and recovered as a team later on but Iran proved too strong,” Ukraine’s head coach Mykola Pasazhin commented.
The 2017 FIVB Volleyball Men's U21 World Championship is hosted by Czech Republic in the cities of Brno and Ceské Budejovice from June 23 to July 2.
Pool A features the Czech Republic, Poland, Canada and Morocco. Russia, Turkey, Cuba and USA are in Pool B.
Iran has been drawn with Italy, Argentina and Ukraine in Pool C. China, Brazil, Egypt and Japan form Pool D.
The world championship is the nineteenth edition of the international volleyball tournament for men's national teams under the age of 21.
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