January 21, 2020 – The Croatia women’s water polo team ended their European Championship campaign in Budapest in 10th place.
Namely, our women’s side lost in the match for 9th place to Israel.
This is the highest-ranking of the Croatia women’s team in competitions so far. Recall, in the previous two competitions (Belgrade 2016 and Barcelona 2018), they finished 11th place, and in Zagreb 2010, they finished 8th place, though there were only that many teams in the competition.
Israel has made more progress in the last 3-4 years and proved it in the pool on Tuesday. Croatia even led the opening 10-12 minutes of the match, though to a minimum (1:0, 2:1, 3:2), which was followed by a series of Israel goals. By the end of the second quarter, Israel was up 3:7, and ended the game at 7:11.
The second quarter was decisive as Croatia allowed six goals and scored just two. The other quarters ended in a tie 11-7(1-1, 6-2, 2-2, 2-2).
Dina Lordan was the best for Croatia with two goals, while Emma Miljkovic, Ema Carevic, Matea Skelin, Domina Butic and Petra Bukic scored one each.
Croatian goalkeeper Aleksandra Ratkovic defended seven of 16 shots against Croatia’s goal and Natasha Trojan Jimenez registered four defenses. Avelet Perese defended nine of 16 shots against Israel’s door.
“At the end of the whole tournament for us, I can be relatively pleased. Six or seven national teams are substantially better than us in quality, Slovakia ran through us and we were not good there. We had a good start against Israel, and then we fell terribly,” water polo coach Marijo Ćaleta said.
“What we are missing is a larger number of players, a more modest choice purely quantitatively and this difference is visible,” he added.
The women’s team traveled back to Croatia after the match against Israel.
Source: HVS
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