Only a few hours after the Iranian national football team grabbed an emotional win over Morocco at the FIFA World Cup in Russia, the Iranian national volleyball players capped one of the greatest day in their sporting history with a 3-0 (26-24, 26-24, 25-22) win over table topping Poland in one of the shocks of the VNL.
In a thrilling clash which threatened to boil over twice and saw the Poles receive a team yellow card at the start of the third set following incessant arguing with officials, it was left to Ali Shafiei and Milad Ghara who scored 13 points each to lead Igor Kolakovic’s side to the most memorable of wins and lift a campaign which saw them arrive in Chicago having lost their last two while owning a record of just three victories from nine before this clash, according to VNL’s official website.
Defeating Poland, who succumbed to just their second loss of the tournament, gave the Iranian squad a monumental lift, especially with the USA and Serbia still to come this weekend.
The competition is being held from May 25 to July 8 in 22 host cities.
The 16 teams compete in a round-robin format with every core team hosting a pool at least once. The teams are divided into four pools of four teams at each week and compete five weeks long, with a total of 120 matches.
The top five teams after the preliminary round join the host of the final round to compete in the final round.
The relegation takes in consideration only the 4 challenger teams. The last ranked challenger team plays the promotion play-off against the Challenger Cup winners. The winners of the play-off will qualify for the next edition as a challenger team.