Serbia Defeats Croatia in Opening Match of European Water Polo Championships

Defeat for Croatia in their opening match in Serbia.

Croatia has suffered a defeat against Serbia at the opening of the European Water Polo Championships in Belgrade. Serbia won 13-6 and this was the worst defeat for Croatia in the history of major competitions. At the previous European Championships, the worst result for Croatia was a defeat against Hungary (5-11) in 1995, reports Index.hr on January 11, 2016.

The opening of the European Championships brought us the match between Serbia, the current world and European champions, and Croatia, the current Olympic champions. Unfortunately, it was a repeat of the World Championships final in Kazan last year when Serbia defeated Croatia 11-4. This time, Croatia again lost by seven goals, although at the beginning of the last quarter Serbia even had a nine point advantage (13-4).
 
Serbia was led to victory by Dušan Mandić and Andrija Prlainović with three goals, while Stefan Mitrović scored two goals. In the Croatian team, the best scorer was Anđelko Šetka with two goals. Croatia last beat Serbia more than five years ago, in the semi-finals of the European Championships in Zagreb in September 2010. 

Before the match, the Croatian flag and the national anthem were booed by the audience. Serbian media reacted with indignation and wrote about the shame which the audience brought to Serbia. During the parade of the participating countries, flags of Germany, Hungary, Turkey and Montenegro were also booed.
 
After the game, Croatian team manager Ivica Tucak said to reporters that Croatia will rise again. “This was a well-deserved victory by Serbia, they were definitely better in all parts of the game. The result is ugly for us, but the tournament has just begun. We have to defeat France, which is the most important game. I hope we will correct our errors and play better”, said Tucak and complained about the referees’ decisions. “I hope we will see each other in the finals.”

Croatian national team member Marko Macan congratulated Serbia on a good game: “Serbia has played very well; they are a great team and favourites for the first place.”

“It is obvious that we have been preparing too much for this match, since we did not know that the Croats would be so unprepared”, said the best water polo player in the world Duško Pijetlović. “In any case, I am glad that the audience enjoyed the match. We are not used to playing in front of such a large number of people.”

Serbian coach Dejan Savić gave his comments. “It would be presumptuous to say that I am not satisfied. We entered the game very seriously. Josip Pavić played well at the Croatian goal, but he nonetheless allowed a lot of goals during the match.”

 

Subscribe to our newsletter

the fields marked with * are required

Email: *
First name:
Last name:
Gender:	Male Female
Country:
Birthday:	[DD] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 [MM] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 [YYYY] 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023

Please don't insert text in the box below!