Phnom Penh, September 2 (PL)-- The arrival of four Cuban beach and indoor volleyball coaches and officials is welcomed today by sport officials in Cambodia, the country that will host the Southeast Asian Games in 2023.

Karell Peña and Berto Friol are the beach and indoor volleyball coaches, respectively, while Leonid Abum and Natyelis Riol are the technical officials who will provide assistance to the Volleyball Federation of Cambodia (VFC).

Of them all, it was Pena who attracted the most attention, because according to VFC secretary general Aing Serey Piseth, "although our training is not yet at the highest level, finishing fifth in the recent Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam shows that our beach volleyball team is not that bad."

Speaking to The Phnom Penh Post, Serey Piseth said that the intention is to win medals wherever we go and not compete to gain more experience, because we already have that.

That is why we have invited Cuban coach Karell Peña to be our beach volleyball technical director, he said and added: "I hope that in the next two or three months he will show us results with the development of our skills" in that discipline.

We will observe his training technique, if it is stronger, similar or weaker than that of our Cambodian coaches, and we plan to hold a tournament to know the answer, he anticipated.

Friol, meanwhile, will serve as a capable assistant coach or technical director who would advise on training and game strategy, as Cambodia already has a foreign expert, China's Li Jun, who led the men's indoor team that made history by winning a bronze medal at the recent regional games in Vietnam.