Serbia volleyball team earns narrow victory over Iran

TEHRAN, June 10(MNA)--Serbia beat Iran 3-0 (30-28, 30-28, 25-22) on Saturday in a scintillating match between the two top teams on the penultimate day of action in the FIVB Men’s Olympic Qualification Tournament at Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. Serbia qualified for the London Olympics with the result and they celebrated enthusiastically on court. Amir Ghafour from Iran led all scorers with 17 points, including eight in the first set. Serbia had four players with double digits, Milos Nikic topping Serbia’s scorers with 14 points. “First, I want to congratulate Serbia for their victory and qualification for the Olympic Games. They demonstrated they are the best team in this competition and one of the best teams in the world. I asked my players to continue to play even when Serbia was playing well,” Julio Vlasco said in the post-match news conference. “On Sunday, we will play Japan and we must play a good match against them. In a tournament, a team has to learn to forget defeats; only they must learn from the defeats. They must learn technical, tactical and specific situations to do better in the match. But within half an hour, they must forget (the previous) match. Tomorrow, It’s a different team with different characteristics in front of a lot of people. It’s another situation. So we must change immediately the image of the game. If we think about this (defeat), we will not be ready,” he added.