After completion of the pool round-robin preliminaries of the 5th AVC Cup for Men on Saturday, the knockout quarter-finals took place on Monday to determine the four winning teams in the semi-finals and the losers will be relegated to the 5th-8th classification round.
Iran, the only Asian team to take part in Rio Olympics, offered a gripping performance against the Thai side and attained a four-set victory thanks to powerful players like Alireza Mobasheri, Rahman Davoodi and Reza Ghara.
Title-hopeful Persians breezed past the hosts in four sets (25-22 28-30 25-20 25-16) to set up a date against Japan who previously suffered a defeat in the hands of Iran in the preliminary round.
Japanese volleyball players, meanwhile, found their way to the semifinals round after they subdued Kazakhstan 3-1 (23-25 25-19 25-22 27-25).
The other semifinal contest on Tuesday will be played against Chinese Taipei and China who managed to quell South Korea and Australia, respectively.
The Iranian outfit clinched the 2008 and 2010 AVC Cup titles though they sadly finished in the fourth place in Almaty, Kazakhstan two years ago.
The 5th Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) Cup for Men kicked off on September 22 in Nakhon Pathom of Thailand and will continue until September 28.
HA/3779847
Your Comment