VOLLEYBALL – BAHRAIN are working hard to get back into top form ahead of the first WAVA Men’s Volleyball Championship 2025, which gets underway in the kingdom on Saturday.
The nationals are less than a month removed from having won their historic title in the AVC Men’s Volleyball Nations Cup 2025, and now have another heated challenge ahead of them against the region’s best volleyball teams.
Head coach Arnaud Josserand admitted that his players are somewhat fatigued after giving their all to winning the continental crown. But he remains confident that they will soon regain their “rhythm” and “shape” as they go for gold in the highly anticipated West Asia Volleyball Association (WAVA) event.
“It is difficult to find the rhythm from the previous competition – we put a lot into that tournament, and after that the pressure went down a little bit,” said the Frenchman, who is a former Olympian.
“The players have come back tired, but now we are trying to push with the weightlifting sessions and to work with quality on the court to get back to the same rhythm and same shape as we had in the previous competition. It is never easy.”
Josserand highlighted that the Bahrainis are determined to maintain their winning ways and come away with the West Asian championship, which would add to their titles from both the AVC Men’s Nations Cup and the 23rd Arab Men’s Volleyball Championship, which they clinched in November of last year.
“When you win an Asian cup, the only goal is to win the next competition,” Josserand said. “We want to win, for sure, but I think we need to go step by step – first game and then second game. The games in the pool are very important to get back to rhythm for high level competition.
“I know our players have enough quality to be able to realise this.”
Bahrain are in Group A for the WAVA Men’s Volleyball Championship’s preliminary round along with the UAE, Jordan, and Lebanon. Group B is composed of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Kuwait.
Following a single round-robin, all eight teams will advance to the cross quarter-finals to begin the knockouts. The match-ups will be based on their seedings from their groups. The semi-finals will follow along with the concluding classification games, leading up to the gold and bronze medal contests.
Matches are to be played at Isa Bin Rashid Arena, located at Isa Sports City in Riffa.
patrick@gdnmedia.bh
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