Akbari urges Iranian volleyball to imitate Japanese pattern
Payman Akbari, the interim head coach of the Iranian volleyball national team, says the country needs to take inspiration from fellow-Asian heavyweight Japan to restore the good old days.
Akbari replaced Mauricio Motta Paes midway through the Volleyball Nations League in June after the Brazilian’s reign was cut short by the Iranian federation after only seven games in charge.
Akbari’s appointment did little to change the fortunes for Iran, which hit new low in the annual event, finishing second from bottom in the 16-team table of the preliminary round despite a couple of victories over USA and the Netherlands.
The result also meant the end of Iran’s last-ditch quest for a place in the upcoming Paris Olympics through the FIVB Men’s Ranking.
“Paes had little knowledge of the players at his disposal as he started his work with the team relatively late, not to mention he barely communicated with his Iranian staff during the matches, though I believe he is not the only one responsible for Iran’s failure,” Akbari said in an interview with the official website of the Iranian Volleyball Federation.
“A team needs proper management and planning, as well as a fine group of players and coaching staff, to get results and I think the Iranian team had major problems regarding those factors,” added Akbari.
“The Iranian federation showed a lot of courage to sack Paes in the middle of the tournament and when I took over, I tried to restore the winning mentality within the squad. We put in decent performances against USA and the Netherlands in the final week despite playing three tough matches in the space of 60 hours. The players were really worn out against France.”
The former national team player insists that the Iranian volleyball needs “a different approach and attitude” for the future.
“We have to change the structure of the Iranian volleyball as we can’t afford to pin all our hopes on a single coach to come to our rescue,” Akbari said.
“We need a different approach and attitude to succeed. We should adopt a right backup plan for the team. The Iranian teams have exceled in the youth-level competitions in recent years but struggled when it came to seniors’ event. Take Italy, for instance. They only used their full-strength squad for the first two weeks to seal the Olympic berth and VNL Finals spot and then named a young set of players for the rest of the way,” said the Iranian.
“We sent the same squad to four tournaments – the Nations League, the Asian Championships, the Asian Games, and the Olympic qualifiers – in the space of several months last year, which eventually led to players exhaustion and failure in qualifying for the Paris Games.”
A Japanese pattern is what Akbari sees as the right prescription for the Iranian volleyball.
Having already punched the Paris ticket, Japan went all the way to the VNL Finals – defeating Iran in the process, in what was a fourth successive straight-set win against the Asian foe over the past two years – before falling to a 3-1 loss to reigning Olympic champion France in Sunday’s final showpiece.
The result in Lodz was yet another episode in Japan’s rise to a global powerhouse of the sport in recent years under French coach Philippe Blain, who has masterminded the introduction of a fine generation of Japanese players – headlined by the formidable trio of Yuji Nishida, Yuki Ishikawa, and Ran Takahashi.
“The Japanese know to invest for the future. They hired Blain as an assistant to a domestic head coach and he worked there for years just to learn about the Japanese players and culture,” said Akbari.
“They have now found such a high confidence that they can replace the whole of first team for a game and still get the result. We should follow in their footsteps.
“We have had seven different head coaches on the bench since 2015, while the number has been one or two for top teams like Brazil and France. It takes the right infrastructures for every coach to deliver results. We have to move on as we have four years to plan and prepare for the next Olympics.”