Dubai: The chief coach of the Argentina volleyball team hopes his players will iron out minor creases and bond together as a unit well in time for the FIVB Men’s Under-23 World Championship, to be held here from August 24-31.
Argentina have been undergoing an intense training camp at their base in Buenos Aires for the past few weeks with the hope they can fare better than the seventh position that they earned at the inaugural championship held in Uberlandia, Brazil in 2013.
Coached by Alejandro Grossi at the 2013 championship, Argentina battled hard for a 3-2 win against Tunisia in their opener, before going down 2-3 against eventual champions Brazil. Argentina won 3-0 against the Dominican Republic and Egypt before ending their Pool A engagements with a 1-3 loss to Bulgaria and qualifying to the play-offs for fifth to eighth positions.
Argentina lost 3-0 against Venezuela but did well to blank Tunisia 3-0 to secure the seventh place. “Our expectations are to have a good tournament that will give all our players the experience to move on to the next level. We want to individually develop our players as they are the future stars for our senior national team. And the one sure way of achieving all this is to accomplish good results in Dubai,” Argentina’s chief coach Martin López told Gulf News from Buenos Aires.
“As a volleyball team, Argentina has always been at the top and one of the goals in this tournament is to be considered among the best teams in the rankings. There is of course a pressure on the players, but this can be a huge motivation for us to come out with the results and make a great tournament and we hope to be among the best teams,” he added.
Argentina was among the first to release their official roster of players with at least nine under-21 players being named by the Federacion Del Voleibol Argentino (FDVA) at the beginning of the month. The trio of Pablo Kukartsev, Ignacio Fernandez and Gonzalo Quiroga are the experienced faces in the team, with U-21 players such as setters Matias Sanchez and Gaspar Bitar, opposite German Johansen, middle blockers Joaquin Gallego, Gaston Fernandez, Edgar Vieira, and outside spikers, Nicolas Lazo, Bruno Lima and Brian Melgarejo also making the grade.
The South Americans will feature alongside defending champions Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Mexico and Tunisia in Pool B while Pool A will consist of Asian champions Iran, Italy, Cuba, South Korea, Egypt and hosts UAE. European champions Russia will take on African champions Tunisia in the opening match at 12 noon on August 24, while Argentina will start their campaign against Turkey at 2.30 pm at the Al Ahli Club and hosts UAE will play Asian champions Iran in the final match of the opening day.
Held every two years, the FIVB Volleyball U-23 World Championship Open for men and women provides a unique opportunity for age-group players to participate in an international tournament with the goal of reducing the gap between age-group and senior level volleyball. There are 12 participants per gender, which are filled by two countries from each continent, determined by each confederation, the highest-ranked country in the senior FIVB world rankings and the host country.
