TEHRAN, Jun. 25 (MNA) – The second day of Men’s U21 World Championships saw five teams, including Iran, securing places among top eight teams of the tournament.

First match of the second day in the Budvar Arena in České Budějovice of Czech Republic was a thrilling encounter between Iran and Ukraine who played five sets before the Persian side snatched the victory over the European side 3-2 (25-19, 25-21, 23-25, 20-25, 15-13).

The debut was more of a neck-on-neck competition as the two teams exchanged points throughout the game and offered nearly equal performances on their attacks.

It was Iran who closed the first two sets with uninterrupted attacks while the next two sets ended in favor of Ukrainians who improved their team play later into the event.

In the fifth and final set, both teams had to begin from scratch and ultimately young Iranian volleyball players managed to pull out a 3-2 victory over Ukraine.

Following the eye-catching game, Coach of Iran Behrouz Ataei said “this match was very important for us, if we could win this, we could go to another level – and we did! Ukraine was not playing on their top level yesterday but today they were very strong and ticked all the boxes of strong volleyball play. My players are tired, yesterday was a hard match and now I’m very happy with this result.”

Also on the second day of the prestigious sportive event, teams from Canada, Cuba, Japan, Poland, Argentina, Russia and Brazil breezed past their rivals confirming their positions among the top eight teams.

The 2017 FIVB Volleyball Men's U21 World Championship will be the nineteenth edition of the international volleyball tournament and the world championship for men's national teams under the age of 21, organized by the sport's world governing body, FIVB.

In the preliminary stage of the tournament, Iran has been seeded in Pool C against Ukraine, Italy and Argentina.

The tournament will be hosted by Czech Republic in the cities of Brno and Ceské Budejovice from 23 June to 2 July 2017.

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