Thinking before losing in volleyball/ the promise of “you are empty” is not a cure for pain – Mehr news agency Iran and world’s news
Mehr News Agency – Sports Group: Volleyball Nations League competitions 2023 is being held and the Iranian national team led by Behrouz Atai could not meet the expectations of the volleyball community in the first two weeks of this tournament. Volleyball fans were not satisfied with the quality of Iran’s games and the results obtained by the national team. Two victories against China and Germany and 6 defeats against the teams of Japan, Poland, Slovenia, Italy, America and the Netherlands are the results of the performance of Atai’s students in the two weeks of the League of Volleyball Nations.
Iran’s top players lost the game at critical moments and in situations where they were winning the field and were only one or more points away from victory, and they were called the defeated and depressed team. In the first week of the competition, Atai’s students presented a weak game against Japan, the superiority of the Samurais in the League of Volleyball Nations showed that this team not only surpassed Iran, its long-standing and traditional opponent in the Asian continent, but also has something to say in the fight with the world’s volleyball contenders. This issue has long sounded the alarm for Iranian volleyball.
The second game of the first week of the competition was the confrontation between Iran and Poland, the world’s strongest team. Atai’s students were great in the first and second sets, but in the end they were called the defeated team of this game. They had nothing to say against Slovenia and lost this match. In the second week of the competition, Iran faced Italy, America, and even the Netherlands in a situation where it could have been the winner, but it was still called the loser in order to worry volleyball fans about Iran’s poor results.
The fact is that it seems that the national team did not have a winning mentality in the eight games it played, and this issue was well evident in the words of the head coach of the national team. Instead of thinking about analyzing technical issues and fixing the weaknesses of his students after each loss, Atai and his staff sought to justify their failures; A thinking that is already a loser and has no place in professional sports anywhere in the world.
This pre-loser mentality was clearly seen even before the start of the tournament; Before the start of the competition, this bad tradition started that the national team always starts the competition badly. Mahmood Afshardost After the national team’s poor results in the first week of the competition, the coach of the national team said: “We started badly in most of the tournaments in the last decade, but the team continued to have a good process and we also experienced this with foreign coaches.”
The words of the coach of the national team were a justification for Iran’s poor performance in the first week of the Volleyball League of Nations so that everyone can expect the brilliance of Iran in the second week of the competition, but the main question is here, the members technical staff They themselves knew that Iran always starts the official tournaments badly, why didn’t they think about it until now and just said that it has always been the same?
The beginning of the second week was accompanied by a victory against Germany. This victory gave hope to volleyball fans. Although some volleyball experts believed that Germany was not a strong team to test Iran and we should not sleep in the wind of this victory; But this victory made Atai, the head coach of the national team, immediately complain about the critics and say: “Basically, we are used to paying more attention to strangers. The pundits analyzed our games in the first week and it was interesting to me that since I became the head coach, they seem to know more about the opposing teams than Iran. No one said that the Iranian team has lost some players of its past quality. Some of them said goodbye and others were injured. Iran does not have seven players compared to the team that played in the Olympics. Apart from this issue, some players who can be with the team are not present. No one passed on this. Milad Ebadipour and Ali Asghar Meghrad, two quality Iranian players, are not with the team, and Meisham Salehi has not reached full fitness either.”
Even though his team won the field, Atai knew that he had a difficult road ahead. That’s why he took the lead and by explaining the conditions of the national team, he justified the team’s possible losses in the future. The head coach of the team talked about the absence of Iranian volleyball stars, but no one understood correctly why Milad Ebadipour, the most influential player of the national team, did not stay with the team in the League of Nations. Or was it a question for everyone, why Amir Ghafoor, the star of Iran’s national volleyball team, who has become a legionnaire for the next season, did not participate in the national team? These issues were not clarified and the members of the technical staff and the volleyball federation did not answer them properly.
However, the defeat against Italy extinguished the last hope for volleyball fans. In the situation that the national team was only one point away from victory in the third set, they lost this set with the result of 26-24; So that the volleyball fans are more worried about the team’s condition than before, although Atai admitted after the loss against Italy that we could not take advantage of the opportunities, but in his speech, he explained the reason for the national team’s loss and believed that in some difficult situations, the stars use information They change the flow of the game, at the same time it is difficult to control the stars, the lesson we learned from this game can help the team in the future.
Atai’s words and his detailed analysis of Iran’s loss against Italy, especially the fact that he stressed that they will learn from the mistakes of this game, once again lit up a glimmer of hope in the hearts of volleyball fans, but the national team did not perform as expected against the United States and lost 3-0. Safar lost to this team. The defeat against the United States proved to everyone that the national team is nothing more than an entertainment bell in this period of the competition, so that in the third set against the United States, while it was on the verge of victory; The defeated team of this match won the title. The loss against America immediately raised the question in the minds of what lessons they learned from the game against Italy were useful?!
Despite this result, Atai started to justify his team’s performance after the loss against America and said: “I took over the 12th team in the world and I think that this unconventional expectation makes the team’s work difficult. Sometimes the team plays badly and we have to apologize, but really Part of We are not the first-class teams in the world. Iran is at the level of teams like Serbia and Slovenia; Of course, some teams have made significant progress. Japan investment above wonderful Oh you Did.”
In the last game, everything went very sensitively. National covered Iran had a good start against the Netherlands, but in a situation where everyone was expecting a victory, Atai’s students ended this game with a bitter taste of defeat and fell one place in the world ranking and placed in the twelfth place.
In the third week of the competition, Atai’s students have a difficult task ahead of them in the fight against the teams of France, Bulgaria, Argentina and Cuba; Although the head coach of the team promised the volleyball fans after the loss against America that we have a long way to go and we can change Iran’s ranking in the Asian Championship, but everyone knows very well that the national team is in a difficult group in the Olympic selection and in the year The World Ranking Olympics is very important and it is better for the members of the technical staff and the head coach of the team to accept the facts and try to improve the conditions of the national team more than in the past.