TEHRAN – Belgian coach Vittal Heinen believes Iranian volleyball has a bright future, but Team Melli failed to qualify for the 2024 Olympics.
Iran performed poorly in the 2024 National Volleyball League and failed to qualify for the Olympics.
Iranian volleyball has been in turmoil since the dismissal of Brazilian coach Mauricio Paes following the national team's disappointing performance in the tournament, finishing 15th out of 16 teams with two wins and 10 losses.
Heinen, who was appointed China national team coach in April, believes the country's volleyball will overcome its challenges soon.
Tehran Times: France won back-to-back gold medals at the 2024 Olympics, beating your former team Poland. The U.S. finished third. Do you think France is the strongest team in the world?
Vital Heijnen: Is France the strongest? France is the team with the most wins. If you win the VNL and you win two Olympic gold medals, you are obviously the team with the most wins, but I don't know if they are the strongest. It's always a different question, because I think the strongest team is Poland. If you look at the world ranking, I think it's the right world ranking. If you look at all the matches over the last few years, Poland is the most stable team. But France has a great quality to play well at the right time. And that's very important in sport. And France is very good, they are the best team at the moment. And that's the quality of the top players. So you have to give them credit for that. But if you look at all the players they have, I still think Poland is the most complete team.
Japan, as an Asian team, has been in the spotlight for the 2024 Vietnam Football League and the Olympics. They are your opponents in Asia, as well as Iran. As China national team coach, you will have a tough task against these teams, especially Japan. Tell us about it.
I think Japan has made a great evolution. I think coach Philippe Blanc has done a great job. The team has gotten better and better. I like that. Why? It shows you that you have to keep investing in your team and keep working hard. And that's what Blanc has been doing there. It's a long-term project that started maybe eight years ago. And it's still growing. I expect Japan to be even better next year. And the year after that, because they're still a young team. So I think Japan will be okay for the next few years. Definitely, in the next three or four years, Japan will be the number one team in Asia, the team to beat. They've done a very smart job and are reaping the rewards.
They won't be in the 2024 Olympics because they missed out on a medal. But they got a reward in the Vietnam National League and overall, you can see how well they're playing. So, I think Japan is clearly number one in Asia at the moment. So, I'm not looking at China beating Japan. There's nothing about that right now.
You've led teams in Europe – Belgium, Poland, Germany and now you're working in Asia – what's the difference?
So, every country is different. I think my ability to adapt to the culture of each country is not so bad. Poland is not like Belgium. Germany is not like Poland. So it's very normal that each national team asks for something different. And of course China is not like these three teams. And my challenge is to work with every country. I always like to read books about the country before I go there. I try to learn a little bit of the language of the country. I try to talk to a lot of people. I try to understand and make my way of working adapt to the country. That's always the challenge. I think my ability to adapt to a country is not so bad. So I think China is different in that I have to learn. We are very busy learning to win. China has good players, but they don't have a culture of winning. And the big challenge is to learn to win against them. So that's the whole concept that we are busy making them win. And we took a big step by winning this VNL Challenger tournament. Maybe it's not such a big tournament for the outside world, but for China here and for us, it's very important to finally win the tournament. So that's the first step and now our challenge is to stay in the competition.
As the coach of the Chinese team, you will be playing against Iran in the near future. As someone who has played against Iran several times, what is your strategy against Iran?
How will we play against Iran? I don't think much about Iran, because I think they are a very good team. They have good players and will play better in the VNL next year than last year. So Iran is not the opponent we are thinking about staying in the VNL. Our goal is to win at least two games and stay in the VNL. But my tactics against Iran, I have no idea. I have no idea. I have no idea what to answer. My tactics are to make China strong again. That's always the basic tactics. To make my team play well. You can't talk about other teams if you don't play well yourself. So we are working very, very hard here in China to make our team play better and better.
As we all know, Iran missed out on qualifying for the 2024 Olympics. As a volleyball coach, do you have any suggestions for the future of the Iranian Volleyball Federation?
I am optimistic about Iran's future. I think Iran has a great future. Iran has a lot of talented young people. I saw Iran win the U20 Asian Championship in Indonesia. I saw them win that tournament, but they won before they had great results in other youth tournaments. So Iran is the future of Asia. Japan is actually the best, Iran is the future. And I don't know what position China is in there. So I think Iran has to keep calm. It might be the hardest thing for Iran to keep calm and keep trying. That should be a big challenge for them. That's a suggestion.
