Volleyball national side

Iran

National team · Iran

«Team Melli»

126 Matches

62 wins

64 losses

244–237 Sets

+7 Difference

1.9 Average per match

Form W W W W W W

Nobody in Asian volleyball forces Iran to work harder than Japan and South Korea, opponents who show up in the same brackets year after year and who Team Melli, as the side is universally called at home, have had to out-jump and out-serve for continental titles rather than simply win by turning up. That rivalry has defined the era since 2011, when the team won its first Asian Championship, a breakthrough that opened a run of three more titles, in 2013, 2019 and 2021.

The federation behind the side dates to 1945, but the national team itself only took shape in 1958, and its first outing came that same year at the Asian Games in Tokyo, where it left with silver. The height advantage that later earned the players nicknames like "the Giants" took decades to turn into silverware; the Asian Games title finally arrived in 2014, then again in 2018 and 2022.

Behind that run sat a string of foreign coaches, among them Julio Velasco, whose spell from 2011 to 2014 lines up with the start of the trophy sequence and is generally credited with turning a talented but underachieving squad into champions. Later came Vladimir Alekno and Igor Kolaković, and the bench is now held by Roberto Piazza. On court, captain Saeid Marouf has run the offence through most of that period, the kind of setter a coaching change rarely displaces.

Home matches are played in front of just 3,000 people at the Azadi Volleyball Hall in Tehran, a small hall by the standards of a team that has beaten the region's best. Iran also reached the podium once outside Asia, taking bronze at the 2017 FIVB World Grand Champions Cup — a single global medal against thirteen wins across the three main continental competitions since 2008.

Latest results

Fixtures and results

3 Oct	Asian Games	Japan A	3:1	W
2 Oct	Asian Games	Pakistan A	3:0	W
1 Oct	Asian Games	South Korea A	3:2	W
29 Sep	Asian Games	Indonesia H	3:2	W
28 Sep	Asian Games	Thailand A	3:0	W
27 Sep	Asian Games	Kyrgyzstan H	3:0	W