Argentina’s Mariano Baracetti has replaced national beach volleyball team’s Brazilian coach Pedro Pablo Costa.
The Qatar Volleyball Association also appointed Brazilian veteran Percy Oncken for reorganising the youth and junior volleyball in the country and Malek Rajdi as the national under-17 coach.
QVA President Ali Ghanim al Kuwari presented all the three officials at a press conference in Doha on Tuesday. “We’re happy to present three new persons for different but very important responsibilities, related with the senior beach volleyball team, junior and youth structures. Their profiles are impressive, we hope to continue our development work at various levels,” said Kuwari.
Also present on occasion was Qatar Beach Volleyball Commission Deputy Chairman Mohammed Salem, who presented the Qatar national coach T-shirt to Baracetti. Kuwari presented the jerseys to Oncken and Rajdi.
Baracetti had been the national under-18 team coach for two years, before being given the charge of the senior team last season. As a player, he has been quite successful, wining the world title at the 2001 World Championships in Klagenfurt, Austria, in company of Martin Conde.
Besides, the three-time Olympian featured in 190 tournaments and was top-ranked on the 2002 FIVB World Tour. He was also ranked among the top ten from 2000 to 2006 on the Tour.
As a coach, he guided the Argentine pair to the gold medal in the Panamerican Games in Toronto in 2015. Also his trainees had bagged the bronze medal in the men’s section and fifth place in the women’s section in the 2014 Youth Olympics in Nanjing.
Talking about his goals and challenges, the 42-year-old coach said, “Pedro (the former coach) did a great job and guided the Qatar team to many big successes. I saw the Qatar team during the Rio Olympics. Both the Qatari players (Jefferson Santos Pereira and Cherif Younnouse) were impressive.
“My initial challenge is the Asian Tour, which is starting soon. Then we’ve the Asian Championships which is very crucial for us. This will decide our fate for the World Championships, to be staged in Vienna,” added the Argentine.
“I’m proud to be given an opportunity to work with the Qatar national team. My assistant Pablo and I will try to do our best and help the players,” he added.
“Also, I will see how we can organise the beach volleyball at the club level so that we can improve the competition level and get more players graduated into the senior level,” Baracetti added.
Oncken, a 56-year-old Brazilian, has coached his national junior and youth teams to eight world championships in his long tenure as the head coach. He also trained Brazilian Super League men and women teams.
“I’ve seen the matches of Qatari under-11, 13, 15 and 17 players. I’ll first try to find players with good height and attitude. Then I’ll prepare them for the international profile. I will be able to speak about it more after a month or so. I don’t know much about Qatar as we never played at the international level.
“I wish to thank the QVA for giving me a chance to work here. I will work with the same passion as I did in Brazil. I’ll try to give my best for Qatar,” Oncken added.
For Rajdi, the biggest challenge is the world championships. “We’ll work now on the under-17 team. Our goal is the qualification for the World Championship in 2019.”