The Greek youth water polo team won their first FINA World Youth Championships 2018 title on Sunday August 19 in Szombathely, Hungary, beating Spain 9-8 (3-3, 4-1, 2-3, 0-1) in the final.

Hungary and Serbia produced an outstanding battle for the bronze, but the hosts ended up clinching the third place, defeating the Balkan powerhouse 14-13 (5-4, 2-3, 3-4, 4-2).

Italy then secured the fifth spot, defeating Croatia 15-13 after penalty shootout.

This thrilling final day led to an unusual podium picture with no medals for the Balkan teams, a scenario which has only happened once in the past at this level in 2014.

You can read detailed game report on FINA website and results are available here.

All the games are available on FINAtv.

Final rankings 2018

1. Greece, 2. Spain, 3. Hungary, 4. Serbia, 5. Italy, 6. Croatia, 7. Montenegro, 8. Australia, 9. United States, 10. Russia, 11. Brazil, 12. Colombia, 13. Egypt, 14. New Zealand, 15. South Africa, 16. Argentina, 17. Canada, 18. Saudi Arabia, 19. China, 20. Uzbekistan

Individual awards

Most Valuable Player: Nikolaos-Sry Papanikolaou (Greece)

Best goalkeeper: Unai Aguirre (Spain)

Top scorer: Ahmed Elsapagh (Egypt) with 29 goals

The men's tournament took place from August 11-19, while the women's FINA Youth Water Polo Championships will be disputed in Belgrade, Serbia, from August 27-September 2. 

New rules porposed at the FINA World Water Polo Conference were tested during this tournament and were generally quite promising: boosting the attacking water polo by offering more support for the players with the ball in scoring situations is definitely a good step (penalties can be called even the ball held in hand in case the defenders put a hand on the attacker from behind). Restricting the aggressive defensive manoeuvres is a good sign too, while setting the new shotclock to 20sec (instead of 30) after exclusions or after regaining the ball within the same possessions leaves at least four minutes more to change possessions and launch new attacks. That was clearly mirrored by the number of shots taken and the goals scored (and getting rid of the boring one-per-period time-outs also helped to enjoy the matches without too many unnecessary breaks). Some fine-tuning is needed obviously and to see how these rules shall be applied in the senior field, but at this level this set definitely made water polo more thrilling and all felt during the nine days that the teen boys enjoyed this edition very much.