SEA Games 29: Women's volleyball worries

(Baonghean.vn) - On July 26, Mr. Tran Duc Phan - Vice President of the Vietnam Volleyball Federation (VFV) confirmed that Japanese expert Mr. Hidehiro Irisawa has agreed to return to Vietnam to work and lead the women's volleyball team to participate in the 29th SEA Games in Malaysia. It is worth mentioning that coach Hidehiro Irisawa just left Vietnam on June 25, 2017.

Mr. Hidehiro Irisawa came to work in Vietnam because of the introduction of the Japan Volleyball Federation. The Japanese expert worked in Vietnam for more than 2 months and his achievement was winning the bronze medal with the Vietnam U23 Youth Women's Team in the 2017 Asian U23 Women's Championship.

However, to be fair, in addition to the Japanese coach's contribution, there was also a certain amount of luck when Korea and China did not register to participate in this tournament.

Volleyball passion

While waiting for the Vietnam Volleyball Federation (VFV) to complete the procedures to sign an official contract, on June 23, Mr. Irisawa emailed VFV saying that if there was no contract by June 30, he would quit his job. However, on June 25, when VFV had worked with the Department of Employment (Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs) and prepared a contract for Mr. Irisawa to sign, he called to inform that he was quitting his job and returning home.

Mr. Irisawa will be the head coach of the women's volleyball team attending the 29th SEA Games. Photo: Internet

To the detriment of VFV, in order to have someone to lead the women's team to the VTV Cup International Women's Volleyball Tournament in July in Hai Duong, there was no other choice but to appoint Mr. Nguyen Quoc Vu (VTV Binh Dien Long An) as acting head coach 5 days before the tournament.

Due to psychological and professional influences, for the first time we lost to the Indonesian team and only won the bronze medal at the tournament. While in the Southeast Asian region, the Thai women's team has always won the SEA Games gold medal because of their level in the top 4 in Asia, the Vietnamese women's team has always won the silver medal.

But the progress in playing style, the enthusiastic fighting spirit and the ability to "read the game" and adjust tactics very flexibly by the coaching staff of the archipelago team made many Vietnamese volleyball experts startled, and began to worry about the plan to compete for the silver medal in Malaysia next month.

Besides Manganang (9) who is the most dangerous attacker, the Indonesian women's team also has many young players who can threaten Vietnam's second place.

For the purposeSEA Games

Before the failure of the women's volleyball team, interim coach Nguyen Quoc Vu resigned, the SEA Games deadline was approaching. Deputy Director of the General Department of Sports and Physical Training Tran Duc Phan made a great effort in the meeting with Mr. Kojima (representative of the Japan Volleyball Federation) on July 15. With the help of Mr. Kojima, Mr. Phan invited Mr. Irisawa to return to Vietnam to continue the unfinished work.

The Indonesian women's team (in blue) will be the competitors for the silver medal in women's volleyball at the 29th SEA Games. Photo: Internet

Today (July 28), Mr. Irisawa will arrive in Hanoi and is expected to have a meeting with VFV leaders on August 31 to sign the contract.

Mr. Irisawa is expected to sign a 1-year contract with VFV, with a salary of 4,000 USD/month. Immediately after that, Mr. Irisawa will start his current job as the head coach of the Vietnam women's volleyball team.

On August 7, he will take the women's team to the Asian Volleyball Championship in the Philippines. After this tournament, our Vietnamese women's team will fly straight to Malaysia to participate in the 29th SEA Games with the goal of defending the silver medal.

Coach Irisawa has coached many famous teams and is considered to have high professional qualifications and diverse and adaptable coaching techniques. In addition to his high self-esteem, in the 3 months he has worked with Vietnamese volleyball, he has left many professional marks.

With not much time left, experts believe that this is a decision that may be "condescending" to coach Irisawa but is reasonable for the Vietnamese Sports Delegation.

Surprisingly, although he voluntarily quit his job at the end of June, Mr. Irisawa was still registered by the Vietnam Sports Delegation as the head coach of the Vietnam women's volleyball team at the 29th SEA Games. This prevented the procedure to go to Malaysia from being delayed, but left a lot of negative comments for this sport.

Previously, during the national team gathering to prepare for the 29th SEA Games, 12/16 players who had just been called up expressed their opposition by simultaneously saying that they would boycott the national team, believing that VFV had chosen the coaching staff and players emotionally and without transparency.

Some athletes even called VFV General Secretary Le Tri Truong as well as the leaders of the General Department of Sports and Physical Training to express their anger, saying that they were not respected, and at the same time requested that VFV work with emotion, reason and first of all for the sake of the country's volleyball movement.

It is known that after that, the leaders of the General Department of Sports and Physical Training asked the teams and athletes to control their emotions, so that the relevant parties could review and re-evaluate the list of coaches and 16 players for the Vietnamese women's volleyball team to attend the 29th SEA Games.

Hopefully, after the unnecessary chaos, the Vietnamese girls will be present in the women's volleyball final at the 29th SEA Games.

AT