The third quarterfinal in Pasay City will offer a clash between two teams that were not expected to fight for the medals. Yet one of them will. Czechia and Iran will cross swords at 15:30 local time (07:30 UTC) in a call to write some history for their countries’ volleyball.
Czechia beat Iran the last two times these teams met in official competition. The most recent encounter occurred in a 2023 Olympic qualification match, which the European side won in four sets. Before that, they met way back at the 2006 World Championship, when the Czechs mastered a straight-set victory.
As a successor of Czechoslovakia, Czechia had a glorious past in the World Championships, with the titles in 1956 and 1966, in addition to four silver medals between 1949 and 1962. However, they have not reached the final four in 55 years. Reaching the quarterfinals at this championship is already the best result Czechia have achieved in the history of the competition as a separate nation. They entered Pool H of this championship as underdogs, but surprised Serbia with a shutout in their opening match. Then, they lost to Brazil and beat China, both in straight sets, enough to finish pool runners-up and progress. In the eighthfinals, they took out Tunisia in straight sets. Czechia have moved from number 21 in the World Ranking before the tournament up three spots to number 18 now. Opposite Patrik Indra tallied a total of 63 points to spearhead the team in the four games so far.
Iran finished sixth at the 2014 World Championship and that was their best result in the history of the competition so far. They entered the current edition as Pool A favorites, but were surprised at the very start by Egypt in a four-set game. Iran bounced back with a four-set win over Tunisia. In a deciding match with hosts Philippines for advancement, the Iranians denied six match points for the opponents in the tie-breaker to survive that five-set thriller and progress to the eighthfinals as pool runners-up. Another five-set battle followed in the first knockout round against Serbia, in which Iran came back from a set down twice to emerge as a quarterfinalist. In the process, the Asian team dropped from number 13 to number 16 in the World Ranking. 22-year-old playmaker Arshia Behnezhad is currently running first in the best setters ranking of the competition with 179 successful sets to his name. Opposite Ali Hajipour is the team’s most prolific scorer with 76 points across the four matches played.
