“We lost in terms of experience.”
This was stated to Idman.biz by Farid Jalalov, head coach of the Azerbaijan men's national volleyball team.
The coach evaluated the matches in the first stage of the Silver European League. He said that in the match where they lost 0–3 to Sweden, they faced difficulties in several moments due to lack of experience:
“The match was neck and neck up to a certain point. But later, experience made the difference. With a few exceptions, most of our players are under 25 years old. As I mentioned in my pre-match interview, most of the players in the squad are young and only play in the national league. When you suddenly pit them against a team like Sweden, of course, we’re going to lose in terms of experience. In the second set, the boys pulled themselves together to some extent; at certain points, we even had the upper hand. We forced the opponent to take two timeouts.”
Jalalov also highlighted that they had the upper hand in experience in the match they won 3–0 against Georgia:
“Although the match against Georgia was balanced up to a point, we won because we were ahead in terms of experience. Even though we were shorter in height, we managed to beat them.”
It should be noted that after two matches in the European Silver League, our national team is in 4th place in the standings with 4 points. The team will host the next stage of the tournament at home. Azerbaijan will face Luxembourg on June 13 and Hungary on June 15 in Baku.
Aytaj Sahed
Idman.biz
