Greece 6 – Serbia 11
(2-3, 3-2, 0-3, 1-3)

Six hundred people were in attendance at this match in Piraeus (GRE), which was described by Greek coach Anastasios Doumpas using the following words: “The final score was not representative of our play. It does not present the real picture of the game. We did not play so badly and we were good in the first half. In the second half we were not tired, but we made some mistakes on man-up, which means we need more training.”

The Greek team captain Argyris Theodoropoulos, who scored twice, made the following comments: “For three periods we were in the game. Serbia is a very good team and most of the players are teammates, so they know each other well. I am very optimistic for this [the Greek] team, but we need time and work.”

Greece: Stelios Protonotarios, Manolis Mylonakis, Ioannis Foudoulis, Nikitas Kochilas, Evaggelos Delakas, Argyris Theodoropoulos (captain)(2), Christos Afroudakis(1), Georgios Doskas(2), Christodoulos Kolombos(1), Dimitrios Miteloudis, Panagiotis Papadogkonas, Manthos Voulgarakis, Kostas Flegkas. Coach: Anastasios Doumpas.
Serbia: Slobodan Soro, Marko Avramovic, Zivko Gocic, Vanja Udovicic (captain)(3), Slavko Gak, Dusko Pijetlovic(1), Slobodan Nikic(1), Milan Aleksic, Nikola Radjen, Filip Filipovic(2), Andrija Prlainovic(4), Stefan Mitrovic, Branislav Mitrovic. Coach: Dejan Udovicic.


Xavier Valles (CRO)

Croatia 11 – Spain 8
(2-2, 5-2, 3-0, 1-4)

This nationally-televised match was played in a festive Dubrovnik (CRO) atmosphere with 2,500 spectators. The fans were thrilled to watch their team garner their third World League preliminary win out of three games to tally 9 points in the rankings to become number 1 in their group and the favourite to advance to the Super Final in June.

This was Croatia’s best match so far in this World League season. After the second period the home team had 7-4 lead, and after third period it was already 10-4 for Croatia. The Croats played much better defensively, but they also beat the Spanish in counter attack, which was their opponents’ specialty.

Croatia: Ivo Brzica, Damir Buric(1), Miho Boskovic(2), Niksa Dobud(2), Petar Muslim, Frano Karac, Pavo Markovic, Andro Buslje, Sandro Sukno(3), Samir Barac(2), Igir Hinic(1), Paulo Obradovic, Josip Pavic
Spain: Inaki Aguillar, Mario Garcia, Adrian Sanz(1), Albert Espanol(1), Guillermo Molina, Marc Minguell, Ivan Gallego, Joel Esteller, Xavier Valles(4), Felipe Perrone(2), Blai Mallarach, Xavier Garcia, Daniel Lopez-Pinedo

Russia 7 – Germany 10
(3-1, 1-3, 2-3, 1-3)

This was a close match, with Russia starting strong and holding a 3-1 lead after the first quarter, but ultimately the home team proved unable to fend-off an increasingly strong German side that was buoyed by a great performance by Marko Stamm (four goals).

In the second period, Gietz, Oeler and Schlotterbeck evened the score by putting in one each, while Russia netted just one goal from Dmitriy Antipov. The third period was in Germany’s favour again, but the game could still have gone either way if Russia could manage to step it up in the final period. But this was not to be, as Russia’s single fourth quarter point from Konstantin Stepanuk was no match for the three decisive goals powered in by Stamm (GER).

Russia: Viktor Ivanov, Pavel Katkov, Vitaly Urchik, A. Ryzhov-Alenichev(1), Uriy Zheltovskiy, Dmitriy Antipov(1), Evgeniy Finaev, Iliya Yablonovskiy, Konstantin Stepanuk(2), Viktor Vishnyakov(3), Sergey Lisunov, Aleksey Agarkov, Semen Davitashvili
Coach: V. Sobchenko, A. Ogorodnikov
Germany: Tim-Ole Fischer, Florian Naroska, Erik Bukowski, Julian Real(1), Marko Stamm(4), Marc Politze(1), Tobias Gietz(1), Ingo Pickert, Tobias Kreuzmann, Moritz Oeler(1), Andreas Schlotterbeck(2), Paul Schuuler, Roger Kong

The next World League games in the European groups will be held on March 31 (GER vs. ESP), April 14 (RUS vs. CRO) in Moscow, April 15: (ROU vs. ITA) in Oradea, and April 29 (FRA vs. SRB) in Aix-en-Provence.

Four teams from Europe will advance to the Super Final, which will be held in Podgorica (MNE) from June 16-21. The host team of Montenegro automatically advances.

* Many thanks to Dean Bauer (Sportske Novosti, Zagreb, CRO) and Panagiotis Nikolopoulos (Hellenic Swimming Federation) for contributing information used in this report.