2015 asian championship 7/31

  • The moment they beat Australia I tried to find more about the foreign recruits. Unfortunately, even the Internet doesn't help much further. My bet, of course, is that Renan Ribeiro and Joao Neto must be Brazilians, but I guess they are quite unpopular even in their home country. Also, there must be typos in some names. Renan's family name is Ribeiro, John's is Chigbo, he is a MB. I can tell you more about the Serbian Milos Stefanovic; he used to play at my hometown club Neftochimik Burgas (Bulgaria) for a year, the 2010-2011 season. He is a very decent setter, the type that wouldn't have much trouble finding a club in Qatar either. I didn't know he had obtained a Qatari citizenship until last year. Still, he is part of a team that beat Australia and is currently leading 2-1 against Japan, so I guess he has been showing volleyball of no lesser quality there as well.


    I checked my video collection and FIVB stats sheets. Renan Ribeiro participated at two Club WCHs with Al-Arabi Doha. In 2011 he was a libero, despite his 195 cm, and in 2012 he was an OH, his usual role. In 2012 he had a quite decent match against Zenit Kazan.


  • I checked my video collection and FIVB stats sheets. Renan Ribeiro participated at two Club WCHs with Al-Arabi Doha. In 2011 he was a libero, despite his 195 cm, and in 2012 he was an OH, his usual role. In 2012 he had a quite decent match against Zenit Kazan.

    Thanks a lot!
    Qatar finally won! and they proved again that you can buy happiness! :whistle:

  • so far no problem for Iran B, 4 wins without losing a single set and they are improving, win or loss tomorrow they have to play either Japan or Australia in quarterfinal, that will be a tough match, if they can survive the quarterfinal, I think they even can win the title.


    with Qatar beating both JPN and AUS, we will have one "small team" in semifinal after a long time. Qatar was great so far but I won't surprise if Taipei or Thailand beat them in quarterfinal. These players are not new, Qatar used them in previous tournaments before but looks like they are getting better and better they finished 6th in Incheon and now has a good chance for a place in semifinal.


    as for the Iranian side, Piroutpour was their best player so far, I think he deserves a chance in A team. Vadi finally got a chance to play as starting setter. he is probably the best setter in Iran (behind Marouf and grandpa Hosseini) but there is an interesting point about this team, the reserve setter is Farhad Salafzoon, when he was 16, he was our reserve setter (behind Marouf) for 2008 Olympic qualifiers in Zoran Gajic's team. after 8 years he didn't improve at all !! when he was 16, some so called "experts" were expecting him to become something special :rolll:

  • so far no problem for Iran B, 4 wins without losing a single set and they are improving, win or loss tomorrow they have to play either Japan or Australia in quarterfinal, that will be a tough match, if they can survive the quarterfinal, I think they even can win the title.

    But I think in this tournament, the best teams (according to matches so far) are China, Qatar and Iran. I'm not talking about potential of teams which I'm sure Japan and Australia are much better teams than this tournament, but here they showed a very week performance, so I think Iran wont have a big problem passing quarter finals against any of Australia or Japan, but in the semis and final beating China and Qatar wont be easy at all.

  • chigbo seems to be nigerian? in any event, haven't seen QAT play but they have a habit of changing the names of the foreign players to arabic names so there might be many more foreigners in their team. QAT, like bahrain and lebanon men's team, and AZE teams, are all made up of foreign mercenaries. (last year's LEB team had a bulgarian, a few latin americans (brazilian?) etc.). pathetic and shameless.


    i see JPN has lots of new faces. i miss koshikawa, fukuzawa, kondoh and gottsu. CHN is a mix of new and old faces. what's up with AUS?


    this tournament doesn't seem to mean much though.

  • Oh! After 19 consecutive wins in asian championship since 2011, Iran finally was defeated by Korea.
    Quarter final matches will be held the day after tomorrow:
    South Korea-Japan
    Qatar-Taiwan
    China-Thailand
    Iran-Australia

  • of the iranians, i only recognize zarini and gholami as having played with the senior men's main team.

    Zarini was part of A team until 2013, but before 2014 he tore an ACL and missed 2014 season, and after that tried a lot to enter A team again but he couldn't. He has played in Asian championship since 2005.
    That Gholami is diferent, the one in the main team is Adel Gholami, this one is Masoud Gholami and they don't have any family relationship with each other.
    Also there are other players who previously had played for A team in world tournaments, like Davoudi and Fayazi.

  • thanks for the correction.


    now that the QF are set, would you say CHN is favorite? surprised at JPN and AUS lackluster performances. KOR struggled against THA and TPE but then beat IRN B. last championships, KOR lost to IRN in the final but beat AUS in semis.

  • now that the QF are set, would you say CHN is favorite? surprised at JPN and AUS lackluster performances. KOR struggled against THA and TPE but then beat IRN B. last championships, KOR lost to IRN in the final but beat AUS in semis.

    I think China and Qatar are the main favorites, also it is very probable some other team changes its behavior and plays a high level.

  • what a match ! it was quite an improvement from Korea match. :win: I think Aussies played better too (comparing to their previous matches here)


    semis are set
    Iran vs China
    Qatar vs Japan


    I could watch 3 matches today, Korea lost everything here, now they will miss the Olympic qualifiers. (unless Iran or Australia qualifies through World Cup which is highly unlikely)
    China had so many problems against Thailand. Thais deserved a set at least. QAT-TPE was close, this is first ever top 4 finish for Qatar, even though I expect them to finish 4th here. hope to see an Iran-Japan final once again.

  • I could watch 3 matches today, Korea lost everything here, now they will miss the Olympic qualifiers. (unless Iran or Australia qualifies through World Cup which is highly unlikely)
    China had so many problems against Thailand. Thais deserved a set at least. QAT-TPE was close, this is first ever top 4 finish for Qatar, even though I expect them to finish 4th here. hope to see an Iran-Japan final once again.

    I hope Japan put out the fire from petrodollars, but I think Qatar can beat Japan easily.

  • ha. THAI still doing the back slide… quite impressive.

    Watching Asian CH gives you the opportunity to see some ancient volleyball methods. :D

  • Live Stream on Youtube for JPN-QAT and IRI-CHN


    for JPN-QAT this Link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDuUNdbQjFQ
    for IRI-CHN this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6WC1b5KWNE
    the match between Japan and Qatar started about 1 hour ago
    and the match between Iran and China will be start at 15:30 GMT (19 Local Time)