TEHRAN - Former Iran volleyball star Behnam Mahmoudi believes that the national team's results in the 2023 Volleyball Nations League (VNL) are unacceptable.

Iran lost 10 games out of 12 matches in the edition. The team came 14th in the tournament, which is the worst performance for Iranian volleyball in the VNL's history.

The disappointing results of Team Melli raised concerns among the volleyball experts and led them to criticize the team's performance as well as the technical staff.

“Everyone noticed that Iran did not perform well in the 2023 VNL. The quality of the games was not good,” said the expert, Mahmoudi, in his interview with Tehran Times.

“We finished 14th in the tournament, which is a really bad and unacceptable rank for our team.

“That result proves that our country's volleyball has obvious shortcomings that need to be solved with the help of experts and people who sympathize with volleyball.

“In simpler terms, the process of finding and training talented players in Iran has not been very effective lately. This problem is starting to have a negative impact on the results of our national team in major competitions,” he added.

Iran won against China and Germany, but lost to Japan, Poland, Slovenia, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.S., France, Bulgaria, Argentina, and Cuba.

“We need to make the technical staff of the team stronger, but it is not the right time to change the head coach and technical staff.

“Team Melli have three important tournaments ahead in the next two months. We have to partake at the 2023 Asian Men's Volleyball Championship, 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou and the 2024 Olympics qualifiers. So, changing anything in the team's technical group is risky,” concluded Mahmoudi, who capped for more than eight years in the Iran volleyball team from 1998 to 2006.