Czestochowa, Poland, June 6, 2015 - Poland won their fourth match of the World League's Intercontinental Round, defeating Iran in their second clash in Czestochowa. This time, however, the home team had to fight the whole five sets to earn their victory 3-2 (22-25, 25-22, 25-16, 22-25, 15-6).
Saeid Marouf, team captain of Iran: I should congratulate Poland again. It was a tough match. We played much better than yesterday, but stopped after the fourth set. We started the fifth set badly, they got three, four points on us and it was very hard to catch up. I didn’t see the numbers but I think they played perfectly in block and counter-attack. For us it was important to take some points, it’s good that we got one and now we have to think about our games in Iran.
Michal Kubiak, team captain of Poland: We’re very happy with this win, which we really needed. Even though we lost one point by winning only after a tie-breaker, we gained something more precious – a team spirit. That’s the key thing for us. Now we’re going on a tournée, and we want to bring at least four victories from it. However, we don’t want to declare any numbers - what matters is that we should get better with every game.
Slobodan Kovac, head coach of Iran: Congratulations to Poland on another win. We stopped playing after the fourth set. We didn’t walk onto the court with the mentality which we had in the first four sets. We must try to change that. In my opinion it’s not enough to play to get a point – we must play to win every time. It’s easy to say that, but so difficult to do it, because the other side are the World Champions, with good players, a super coach, well-organised and disciplined. I think we are not doing our best. We have the quality to play much better and I hope that with every match our game will be better and better. Tonight I’m satisfied only because we really tried to fight. Congratulations on this fantastic show and I hope to come here another time.
Stephane Antiga, head coach of Poland: It was a tough game today, because, as coach Kovac said – they fought. We started badly, with too many mistakes in reception, service and attack. A lot of interesting things were happening, but we got blocked too many times. We can play much better, We won four games out of four. That’s great satisfaction but we know perfectly well that it will get more difficult now, with a lot of travelling, which is tiring. Our next test is the USA.