MEN’S WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP IN CRACOW
Iran
20 June, 2014
After school I went with my friends to the Cracow Gallery. When we were in “Saturn” shop we
saw a very tall man with dark hair and eyes as blue as the sky. We identified him, because this
man was.. Michał Winiarski! We didn’t believe our eyes, because we have always wanted to see
him! So we went for an autograph. We were next to Michał only for a moment and at the
beginning didn’t hear what we were talking to him. This moment was short, but we were very
delighted. The Men’s World League 2014 had started, but we haven’t met volleyball players in
Cracow yet, but captain of Polish team made us happy.
21 August, 2014
Today was my 17th birthday and it was the best birthday in my life. It all started with a surprise.
I met my friends in a shopping center. Everything was ok, but I started thinking what Justyna had
in her bag. Maybe a gift for me? I didn’t ask, I thought: I will be patient. We sat, when suddenly
Justyna started talking about Iran’s volleyball match in Cracow. I really wanted to go on this
match, because I really like this team. And next.. I got the ticket for the World Championships! I
was thinking that it was a dream, but everything was true. I could see real volleyball- players live
and feel these emotions. It was totally a huge surprise for me. Of course, I couldn’t go there
alone, but with Justyna, so satisfaction was twice as large. The match will be at Kraków Arena
and our seats are 19 and 20 in sector A7. We couldn’t wait. All day I had a smile on my face and I
counted the days to this event.
30 August, 2014
The day before the match. I made an appointment with Justyna that I will come to her for all the
night. When we met, Justyna was very happy, I noticed she wanted to tell me something, but I
didn’t know what she meant. Next I didn’t believe my ears.. Justyna found the hotel where
volleyball-players from all over the world were staying. How did she do it? She saw it on
Facebook, on the page which belongs to one of the Iran players, who added a photo of the place
where they were. It was a big chance for us so why not try it? We ascertained and we will go
there! We were very excited because there was 50% chances to meet them there. We didn’t
know what would happen, in our heads there were thousands of thoughts. If someone could
read the thoughts, he would think: crazy women! Haha, that’s right :D So when we saw the hotel
and coaches near it, the pressure increased and we thought we would faint. We went closer and
we saw volleyball-players of Iran and Italy in a dinning room. The pace of our heart, accelerated.
We hoped we would be lucky and someone would give us autographs. We were so close… One
moment, 4 players started waving and smiled to us- we reciprocated it. After that, someone
went out- Zarif and Tashakori, so we went for some autographs. Finally, we said “thank you and
good luck”. It was the beginning of everything, we got the first autographs. We couldn’t sleep all
night before the match of Iran against Italy.
31 August, 2014
The first match. We painted hearts in colours of Iran’s flag on our faces and very excited, went to
the bus. With all these emotions I was sick, in my stomach “ butterflies were flying like crazy”.
We had the best seats at the bottom, we were waiting for the appearance of the players. First,
Italians appeared and then the Iranians. We reacted with a loud shout. We came closer to the
crash barrier to watch the players who were doing exercises before the game. Subsequently two
players of Iran went through the barriers to sit in the audience. They were the libero- Alizadeh
and the middle-blocker- Faezi. Alizadeh greeted with his nationals, next he turned to us, smiled
broadly and he said “Hiiiiiii!”. We were very happy! Then we saw that other players of Iran
recognised us from the hotel so they started smiling and waving to us. Before the start of the
match, we went to take a photo with Alizadeh and Faezi.
The match started. From the beginning Iran had an advantage. All the time libero from the
audience was smiling to us, it was strange, but his smile was beautiful. During the match,
emotions were very big and the battle for points was fierce. The result of the match was 3:1 for
Iran. Later we got autograph from the player with number 12- Mirzajanpour. We wanted more
so we decided to go for the next match.
Photo with players of Iran- Alizadeh and Faezi.
5 September, 2014
I decided to go to the hotel with my friends Justyna and Gabriela. We bought the tickets for the
next match and we got next autographs from Gholami and Mahdavi. In Galeria Krakowska we
met the referee Hussein from Kuwait and we were talking to him, because he remembered us of
the match.
6 September, 2014
Saturday’s match was between Iran and Belgium. We sat on the same seats as on the previous
match 6 days ago, but near us were the fans of Belgium, who were so loud that we went to the
different sector near the fans of Iran. We took with us our friend Gabriela and Justyna’s cousin
Dominika on this match. When we were observing Iran’s players on the volleyball court, a
photographer said “Smileee!” and he took us a photo. Of course, my favorite player Alizadeh
noticed me and Justyna and he waved to us again. During the match there were a lot of
emotions, adrenalin and very good actions. When started a long break, fans of Iran were taking
photos with each other and other people, so we went to them to take some photos. They were
very friendly and nice .
Iran won 3:1 in sets. After the match, when Alizadeh was smiling, I showed him a raised thumb in
the gesture of good work and he showed the same to me, afterwards I was clapping my hands
and I started to shout to Seyed and someone asked me:
“-Seyed?
-Yeah, Seyed!
-Can I take a photo with you?
-Yes, of course.”
We took a photo and the Iranian fan said “Thank you, dziękuję”. We got again three autographs
from Fayazi, Faezi and Mahmoudi. We wanted to get autograph from Seyed, so Gabriela started
shouting “Seyeeeeed!!!”, but we failed! We didn’t get his autograph, but he waved to us and
sent a kiss. Near the Kraków Arena one of the Iranian boys gave us two flags of their country. We
went to the gallery and we met these boys there again. We greeted them and later, we saw that
one of them, was running to us. He told that he could offer us a tickets for the last match in
Cracow. “How much?” I asked. “Free!” he said. We couldn’t believe..Ali and his friend
Mohammad had tickets from the Iranian embassy in Warsaw. After a short conversation, we
agreed and we were delighted.
Me and my friends after the match
7 September, 2014
In the afternoon, we arranged a meeting in the gallery with Ali and Mohammad. After that, Ali
went to the hotel for the tickets and we went to the Arena with Mohammad. We were waiting
with anticipation to see our favourites who were playing with Puerto Rico. When we had the
tickets in our hands, we saw on this an inscription “Invitation VIP”. We were walking down the
red carpet like move stars. Then we decided that we want to be close to the players so we took
places stated below just like during the last matches. While a warm-up my favorite players was
doing some exercise alone and he was so happy that he greeted us. During the national anthem
of the countries, we saw that Alizadeh was looking at us, although he had to be very serious,
because he was singing his anthem. Like we were thinking, Iran won 3:0 and in the all Cracow
group of volleyball, Iran was on the 2nd place.
It was our last match in Cracow. After game, Mahmoudi was giving his autographs. All, we have
9 autographs and a photo. These days will be in my memory forever.
September and October 2014
After the Men’s World Championship I was in touch with Ali on Facebook. One day, he told me
“I have a surprise for you”. I was very interested, but I was guessing. He had been keeping me in
suspense for a long time and then sent me a photo of players T-shirts. I found out that Ali was in
the hotel after the match and he asked Alizadeh for a T-shirt for me, because I really love him. I
was thinking that it was impossible, but that was right. I was very happy, because I wanted to get
his T-shirt and Ali knew it. And now, I am grateful to him, because my next dream came true.
It’s me! With a T-shirt of my favorite player!
November 2014
It’s been two months since the last match; with my friends we have been beginning to miss
them. We are sure that we are going to go to the World League 2015 POLAND- Iran in Poland.
We haven’t seen the Polish Team yet. We simply have to see Alizadeh and talk with him!
As you can see
DREAMS COME TRUE!!!
