A brief introduction:

The performance of our national volleyball team in the world league, world championship and Asian Games of Incheon was one of the epics which brought a great joy to our nation all over the world. As the witness of experts, great honors of sport root and cause of it is related to the strong and fundamental management of volleyball federation. Discovering talented juniors and youths, training of them in the past years has brought this national pride for us. Created mobility in Iran volleyball has put volleyball among the giants of the globe. Some years ago our volleyball was wishing to take several points from teams of Korea, Japan and China in its matches versus each of them.

And we remember volleyball of Iran had got a pleasant seat at 8th or 9th rank of Asia.

But management of a men upon planned programs with his colleagues made Iran champion in Asian volleyball and stay among the titans of the world.

These days he is trying to keep away volleyball from margin, he is doing his best to keep order in his federation. By considering high achievement of volleyball he has been invited for an interview. 

 

 

 

Mojtaba Zakizadeh young journalist had done this interview in Persian Language. – See more in Persian at: http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=13930807000553#sthash.18maGEF2.dpuf

It got it very important. So translated it to English. But translation does not mean that I have full agreement with all the views. In some of those I have also my personal opinion.

Rahim RAHIMZADEH

(We both M. Zakizadeh and me are ISJA & AIPS members).

Q- For presence in the FIVB World Championship, Mohammad MOUSAVI announced, he is tired and he doesn’t want to participate in this games. How did you manage this situation?

A-Well, in active sport sometimes such accidents also happen. Coping with them needs sportive management. We always confront with such difficulties and we should be able to handle them. Any federation like ours which has 7-8 national teams would face with such different challenges and has to find a proper solution to them.

Such cases which happed with Mousavi may occur to any other player. We try to manage the situation. Players were tired; they were in need to have a rest. In some other cases an athlete by having family issues could not participate in national team’s training camps. Administrating, separation, directing and diagnosing such player, even being or not being of him in the team combination returns back to the authorities of federation and their cognition over players’ situation. We normally do not enter into the personal and privet scopes. But we do our best to solve their personal problems when needed; in other matters we do our utmost efforts to preserve and observe the national benefits. So that interests of country not run with any prejudice.

All our activities in the sport of country are done for protecting the national interests, promoting respect and international position of Iran. Sometimes decisions of our players are done upon their emotion, they have difficulties and existence of those is normal. But awareness of time and place by knowing which job has priority is related to the federation. It is just for getting well use from all capacities in proper time for achieving pre-fixed programs.

Q-It means the first and last word goes by federation?

During the training camps this Impression is created that a player as Mohammad Mousavi feels tiredness. Some players are confronting with old injuries, those hurts them during the training sessions.

In this situation they think that not participating in a tournament would be better for them. But distinguish this matter goes back to technical staff and federation. We should accept this subject that all the players, technical staff and even authorities of federation – all are soldiers and we should give best service to our system and do walk for preserving benefits of the country I like Mousavi very much. He is one of the best players of Iran. But I did not agree with his request and I asked him to continue his mission as a soldier as he had served in the national team. We noticed Mousavi had a fantastic and non-alternative role in the FIVB World Championship and in the Asian Games. Here once again I would like to thank him and his teammates for their hard work.

Q-In the FIVB World Championship we achieved sixth rank with young and motivated head coach Slobodan Kovac. Would you please give some explanations in this regards?

A-In federation’s work schedule for the current year we had several proposed goals. Ascending to the second round of the World Championship was our main goal. As you may have noticed, I had written down all goals on white board of my working room. It was for refreshing my daily mind. The Olympic Games take place every 4 year. In FIVB world ranking for any team, the achieved points are allocated. The highest number of points are 100, which is given to the Olympic Games, also for the World Championship, but for the World League 50 is highest what could be achieved. Perhaps Points of Asian Games does not have any effect in the World Ranking. But for defending our prestige we went to Korea. We were obliged to get the Champion title. For this reason the Asian Games were important for us. Only for qualification tournaments points have role in FIVB world ranking. But tournament of the World Championship had special value for us since the result had effect in our world ranking. For all senior continental championship Points start from 30. It is natural that in the recent years the world volleyball view towards Iran has been changed, they have accepted that Iran is one of the new titans of the world and they respect us. Our work in World Championship started with 2 wins versus Italy and USA, these victories clarified this matter for the FIVB that Iran has dream for world podium in its mind. Altogether what we expected from our team was realized in the World Championship; even we walked beyond our forecasted aims.

Actually being among the 6 superior teams of the world was a big job. While giants of the world couldn’t find way there but Iran became sixth.

Q- Keeping preparation of the players in such condition is also a hard work. Isn’t it?

A-We had the World League, after it we entered into the important tournament such as World Championship. All the team members were under pressure; moreover we noticed that after the match versus Serbian their coach said they did not have potential of play. Even Russian team for achieving fifth or sixth place has entered to the playing ground; they wanted at least to repeat their fifth place which they had achieved in the last period.

Glistering of Iranvolleyball in the World Championship is a value. In sport all teams have one good day and one bad day. But all together I am very content with  the performance of Iran team at the World Championship. I am to this belief that for reaching to the Olympic podium we should get more mature, experience and skills. Defeat from big teams helps us to reach better situation in the future. Loss brings down saturation feeling in the team. For ascending to the Olympic podiums, team should have greedy and feel necessity for win.

During the World Championship it was inevitable for us to stand over the champion podium. Happening this matter was very nice and pleasant .But according an old saying “you cannot run before you can learn to walk” so we should be logical and move forward step by step. At the moment our progress is such a missile, and may be it is not good for volleyball.

To be continued …

PHOTO: www.volleyball.ir ; Farnoosh Moradmand