TEHRAN – Iran suffered their first defeat at the second competition week of the men’s 2019 FIVB Volleyball Nations League on Friday.

Team Melli lost to Brazil 3-2 (23-25, 25-16, 21-25, 33-31, 15-10) in Pool 7 at the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza in Tokyo, Japan.

Ricardo Lucarelli Souza led Brazil with 20 points, while Mohammad Mousavi scored 19 points for Iran.

Iran will face Argentina on Saturday and play Japan on Sunday.

Iran had a great start, dropping only one set total in the three games against Italy, China and Germany in Jiangmen last week.

The competition will be held between May and July 2019 and the final round will take place in the Credit Union 1 Arena, Chicago, United States.

 This is the first edition of the World League or the Nations League to have the Final Round hosted in North America.

The 16 teams compete in a round-robin format with every core team hosting a pool at least once. The teams are divided into four pools of four teams at each week and compete five weeks long, for 120 matches. The top five teams after the preliminary round join the hosts of the final round to compete in the final round.

The relegation takes into consideration only the four challenger teams. The last ranked challenger team will be excluded from the 2020 Nations League. The winners of the Challenger Cup will qualify for the next edition as a challenger team.

The six qualified teams play in 2 pools of 3 teams in round-robin. The top two teams of each pool qualify for the semifinals. The pool winners play against the runners-up in this round. The semifinals winners advance to compete for the Nations League title. The losers face each other in the third place match.