News / Sports

Iran edges past Russia in FIVB U23 World Championship, fails to reach semis

Thursday, 24 August 2017 8:31 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 24 August 2017 8:32 AM ]

The photo shows a view of the match between the national Iranian volleyball team (players in navy blue) and Russia at the FIVB Volleyball Men's U23 World Championship in Cairo, Egypt, on August 23, 2017.

The national Iranian volleyball team has achieved a hard-fought victory at the preliminary round of the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) Volleyball Men's U23 World Championship in Egypt, but failed to advance to the semi-final stage of the international tournament.

On Wednesday, the Iranian squad could edge past the Russian outfit 4-3 (15-11, 12-15, 10-15, 15-13, 13-15, 20-18 and 15-11) in a Pool B match at Cairo Stadium Indoor Halls Complex in the Egyptian capital city.

Even though Persians won the match, they were knocked out of the next level when their Russian opponents claimed their third set for a 3-2 lead.

The Iran men’s national under-23 volleyball team is scheduled to face Japan in a 5th-8th place classification match on Thursday.

“I congratulate my team because we were able to beat a strong team and one of the top-seeded teams,” Iran’s head coach, Juan Cichello, said after the match.

The photo shows a view of the match between the national Iranian volleyball team (players in navy blue) and Russia at the FIVB Volleyball Men's U23 World Championship in Cairo, Egypt, on August 23, 2017.

Russian head coach, Andrey Voronkov, said, “Our qualification is not good enough, because we won only one point despite preparing the team very well and showing a good performance. I think the mistakes were all psychological as the players felt in the seventh set that they will lose so they made unforced mistakes.”

“We played well and did what was needed from us, but we were supposed to work harder and we should not have done such easy mistakes,” Russia captain, Pavel Pankov, commented.

The 2017 FIVB Volleyball Men's U23 World Championship, which is the third edition of the international volleyball tournament, started in Cairo, Egypt, on August 18 and will finish on August 25.

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