TEHRAN - Mahmoud Afshardoust, a former player of the national volleyball team, believes that the country’s volleyball needs to plan for its future.

The national team finished 15th in the 16-team standing of the 2024 Volleyball Nations League (VNL). Team Melli suffered 10 losses and just registered two wins in the prestigious event.

“This year, everyone knew that there was a difficult task ahead of us in VNL. We had hired an unknown coach Mauricio Motta Paes and the Brazilian coach didn’t have much time to prepare Team Melli. On the other hand, the Iranian players were under pressure to secure their place in the 2024 Olympic Games,” the executive member of the Asian Volleyball Confederation said.

“Mr. Paes was involved in club competition in France and, in my opinion, the head coach of the national team should work more on the team's mental and psychological issues than on technical and tactical issues, because he had a short time at his disposal,” Afshardoust stated.

“We failed to get good results in week 1, but our problems are not related to today and we have been involved in it for years. We still have problems with the serve receive, side out and stuff block. You saw all this in the first week. In my opinion, these are the infrastructure and basic problems that have arisen for volleyball in our country. The federation should try to fix it.

“After the end of the week 1, we were well aware we cannot go to the Olympics, and I think the team should have played volleyball without pressure in week 2, but Mr. Paes could not bring the team back to normal conditions. He should have tried to bring the team back but the team didn’t return to the normal condition. At the same time, I must also say that Mr. Paes did not know the team very well and I think his team’s arrangement was wrong. These problems were quite evident.

“Peyman Akbari took charge of the team in week 3 and considering that he has a good knowledge of the national team and has worked as a coach and player in Iran for many years, the national team improved under his leadership. Actually, he made some changes and these changes helped us a lot. In the game against the Netherlands and the U.S., these changes helped the team. In addition, Akbari was able to reduce the pressure. The team mentally improved in week 3 and we saw good fighting from the national team, something we did not see in the initial games. We won the first and second games, but in the third and fourth games, we could not win against France and Germany due to fatigue,” said the former coach of Iran volleyball team.

“Anyway, this year is over and we have to plan for the future to maintain our ranking, which unfortunately did not happen in these games. We hope that the federation will be able to consider all aspects very carefully. Not only the players but also the management and technical staff are responsible for this defeat and we have to realistically deal with the problems. And in the end, I must say that we should consider grassroots volleyball very seriously,” Afshardoust concluded.