Czechia’s fairy tale continues into the semifinals!

Czechia continues to write history at the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship in the Philippines. In Thursday’s first quarterfinal in Pasay City, they beat Iran and qualified for the semifinals of a World Championship for the first time in 55 years, since their predecessors Czechoslovakia last made it that far in the competition, and for the very first time as a separate nation. In Saturday’s semis, Czechia will take on the winner of the last quarterfinal between the United States and Bulgaria, serving off later on Thursday, at 20:00 local time (12:00 UTC).

• Watch the 2025 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship on VBTV

Czechia managed to recover from Iran’s fiery start to the first set that got them to an early five-point advantage, but also made far too many unforced errors that allowed Iran to come out as set winners with opposite Ali Hajipour pounding the closing point from the back row. Iran got off to an early lead in set two as well, and once again, Czechia caught up to make it interesting. The Asians were the first to reach set point, but the Europeans took control with an ace by opposite Marek Sotola. Moments later, another ace by outside hitter Lukas Vasina closed the set Czechia’s way. Czechia greatly reduced the number of errors, while those were abundant for Iran in the third set, and that tilted the score the Europeans’ way to put them in the lead. With the momentum entirely on their side, the Czechs cruised on to a 3-1 (22-25, 27-25, 25-20, 25-21) victory, with outside Jan Galabov nailing the match winner.

Czechia outperformed Iran in attack by 56-54 in spike kills and in net defense by 7-5 in kill blocks, but the biggest difference came from the fewer unforced errors they made – 25 against 31. Opposite Patrik Indra showed a great efficiency in offense, swinging at a 69% success rate. He also fired a couple of aces towards a match-high total of 22 points. Vasina came a close second with 21 points, including one ace and one kill block. He registered a 61% success rate in attack.

“I still don’t realize what happened. It will take some time for sure,” Indra told VBTV. “From the start of the game, we were under big pressure. We were about to lose the second set too, but the guys from the bench came in and decided that set to keep us alive. We did much better in the third and the fourth sets, but even when we were leading by seven points, the end of the game still felt so far. I cannot find the words… We said to ourselves that the first game against Serbia would be important, but we were not thinking about qualification beyond the group. We wanted to show good volleyball, because we have really good players and a really good team. But we are not big stars yet, we were the underdogs, and it’s been like a fairy tale.”

Iran delivered seven aces in the match, against five from the opponents. 21-year-old outside Poriya Khanzadeh authored three of those and spiked at a 54% success rate towards a team-high 18 points to match the tally of Hajipour, who signed off with three kill blocks and a 65% success rate in attack. Outside and captain Morteza Sharifi also reached the double digits with 11 points, including two aces.

“It was a really difficult game for us. We lost the game, but we are a young team and a really good team. This experience is very good for us ahead of the next games in the VNL or the next World Championship,” 20-year-old Iranian outside Ali Haghparast commented.

2025 FIVB Volleyball Men’s World Championship: full schedule and results

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